47.5606° N, 7.5906° E
BASEL
Most Famous People Born in Basel, Switzerland
- Notable people
- 1,646
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1922
- Most distinctive
- Art Historian 8.0×
A Rhine city whose distinctive professions are art historians, philologists, theologians, historians, and mathematicians — the trades of a humanist university town that published Erasmus, Holbein, and the first printed Greek New Testament. Euler was born here, so were both Bernoulli brothers, and Jacob Burckhardt more or less invented art history at the university. The 15th- and 16th-century bench is one of the heaviest in Switzerland, and Roger Federer is the most recent addition.
One face per century — the most globally famous figure born in Basel during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 150 notable births.
What Basel Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Basel's biggest profession — 10% of all notables (157).
Basel over-indexes on art historian — 8.0× the global rate.
Basel under-produces football — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Basel's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Writing
- Science
- Politics & Law
- Art & Design
- Film & TV
- Sports
- Other
- Filtered to 1590s Clear ×
Matthäus Merian
1593 - 1650
Johann Rudolf Wettstein
1594 - 1666
Johannes Buxtorf II
1599 - 1664
Remigius Fesch
1595 - 1667
Samuel Braun
1590 - 1668
Theodor Zwinger (pasteur)
1597 - 1654
Nikolaus Rippel
1594 - 1666