47.3744° N, 8.5411° E
ZURICH
Most Famous People Born in Zurich, Switzerland
- Notable people
- 2,462
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1941
- Most distinctive
- Author 3.5×
A Reformed Swiss city with a disproportionately large academic-and-letters bench. Zurich's distinctive professions are authors, academics, architects, artists, and physicists — the trades of a German-language university town that runs from Gottfried Keller through Max Frisch on the literary side and Einstein and Pauli on the scientific. Pestalozzi, Rorschach, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross all belong to this bench, and nearly eighty per cent of the names were born after 1900.
One face per century — the most globally famous figure born in Zurich during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 264 notable births.
What Zurich Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Zurich's biggest profession — 7% of all notables (164).
Zurich over-indexes on author — 3.5× the global rate.
Zurich under-produces football — only 0.4× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Zurich's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Writing
- Sports
- Art & Design
- Science
- Film & TV
- Music
- Other
- Filtered to 1800s Clear ×
Karl Bodmer
1809 - 1893
Johann Kaspar Bluntschli
1808 - 1881
Arnold Escher von der Linth
1807 - 1872
Johann Georg Baiter
1801 - 1877
Heinrich Wydler
1800 - 1883
Salomon Hirzel (Verleger)
1804 - 1877
Bernhard Hirzel
1807 - 1847
Ludwig Hirzel
1801 - 1841
Jakob Zeugheer
1803 - 1865
Leopold Schmid (filosof)
1808 - 1869
Gerold Meyer von Knonau (Archivar)
1804 - 1858
Wilhelm Meyer (Maler)
1806 - 1848
Conrad Caspar Rordorf
1800 - 1847
Melchior Ulrich
1802 - 1893
Wilhelm Füssli (Politiker)
1803 - 1845
Ludwig Schulthess
1805 - 1844
David Friedrich Wiser
1802 - 1878
Emil Schulthess (Heraldiker)
1805 - 1855
Friedrich Schulthess
1804 - 1869
Friedrich von Dürler
1804 - 1840