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
- Field: Mathematician Clear ×
Leonhard Euler
1707 - 1783
Jacob Bernoulli
1655 - 1705
Johann Bernoulli
1667 - 1748
Nicolaus II Bernoulli
1695 - 1726
Nicolaus I Bernoulli
1687 - 1759
Johann III Bernoulli
1744 - 1807
Johann II Bernoulli
1710 - 1790
Nicolas Fuss
1755 - 1826
Jakob Hermann
1678 - 1733
Jakob II Bernoulli
1759 - 1789
Peter Henrici (mathematician)
1923 - 1987
Andreas Speiser
1885 - 1970
Rudolf Fueter
1880 - 1950
Walter Gautschi
Born 1927
Niklaus Bernoulli
1623 - 1708
Theophil Friedrich Christen
1873 - 1920
Christine Riedtmann
Born 1952
Hanspeter Kraft
Born 1944
Otto Spiess
1878 - 1966
Max Steck
1907 - 1971
Petrus Ryff
1552 - 1629
Johann Jakob Burckhardt (Mathematiker)
1903 - 2006
Hansjörg Geiges
Born 1966
Johann Rudolf Merian
1797 - 1871
Peter Buser
Born 1946
Christian Blatter
Born 1935
Karl von der Mühll
1841 - 1912
Georg Friedrich Meyer (Geodät)
1645 - 1693
Robert Hans
1932 - 1989