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: Philologist Clear ×
Andreas Heusler
1865 - 1940
Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer
1864 - 1936
Robert Kopp
Born 1939
Margarethe Billerbeck
Born 1945
Fritz Senn
Born 1928
Andreas Kilcher
Born 1963
Peter von der Mühll
1885 - 1970
Wilhelm Vischer-Bilfinger
1808 - 1874
Andreas Fischer (Anglist)
Born 1947
Christoph Schäublin
Born 1941
Thomas Gelzer
1926 - 2010
Martin Lienhard
Born 1946
Ludwig Abel (Semitist)
1863 - 1900
Thomas Wilhelmi (Germanist)
Born 1955
Julius Schwabe (Semiotiker)
1892 - 1980
Gustav Binz (Philologe)
1865 - 1951