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 1840s Clear ×
Friedrich Hegar
1841 - 1927
Albert Socin
1844 - 1899
Ludwig Georg Courvoisier
1843 - 1918
Paul Speiser
1846 - 1935
Jenny Burckhardt
1849 - 1935
Ernst Georg Jung
1841 - 1912
Karl von der Mühll
1841 - 1912
Emil Bürgin
1848 - 1933
Rudolf Stähelin-Stockmeyer
1841 - 1900
Theophil Preiswerk
1846 - 1919
Johann Emil Müry
1843 - 1923
Adolf Glatz
1841 - 1926
Emil Burckhardt
1846 - 1926
Rudolf Brefin
1847 - 1892
Emil Bischoff
1847 - 1921
Rudolf Massini der Ältere
1845 - 1902
Eduard Eckenstein
1847 - 1915
Edouard Noetzlin
1848 - 1935
Henri Vuilleumier
1846 - 1925
Wilhelm Bachofen
1841 - 1922
Fritz Lotz
1842 - 1894
Hans Franz Passavant (Unternehmer)
1845 - 1909
Emanuel Wackernagel
1846 - 1902