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.

Through the Centuries

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.

  1. Politician164
  2. Actor141
  3. Writer128
  4. Football114
  5. Painter102
  6. Academic80
  7. Sport77
  8. Author74
  1. Author743.5×
  2. Academic803.2×
  3. Architect572.6×
  4. Artist632.5×
  5. Physicist252.4×
  6. Film682.3×
  7. Sculptor322.0×
  8. Historian512.0×
  1. Football1140.4×
  2. Politician1640.6×

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.

1550160016501700175018001850190019502000
  • Writing
  • Sports
  • Art & Design
  • Science
  • Film & TV
  • Music
  • Other
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Physicist25
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Showing 25 of 2,462 notable people

0009 PHYSICIST

Felix Bloch

1905 - 1983

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0024 PHYSICIST

Walter H. Schottky

1886 - 1976

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0064 PHYSICIST

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker

Born 1939

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0106 PHYSICIST

Jakob Ackeret

1898 - 1981

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0115 PHYSICIST

Heinrich Rudolf Schinz

1777 - 1861

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0142 PHYSICIST

Johannes Gessner

1709 - 1790

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0184 PHYSICIST

Thomas Stocker

Born 1959

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0414 PHYSICIST

Hans Benndorf

1870 - 1953

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0434 PHYSICIST

Egon Bretscher

1901 - 1973

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0493 PHYSICIST

Gian-Reto Plattner

1939 - 2009

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0525 PHYSICIST

Herbert Arthur Stuart

1899 - 1974

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0578 PHYSICIST

Gabriel Aeppli

Born 1956

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0710 PHYSICIST

Peter Minkowski

Born 1941

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0752 PHYSICIST

Charles Enz

Born 1925

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0776 PHYSICIST

Georg Busch (Physiker)

1908 - 2000

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0964 PHYSICIST

Dieter Imboden

Born 1943

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1066 PHYSICIST

Alexander von Muralt

1903 - 1990

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1219 PHYSICIST

Leonard Benedict Loeb

1891 - 1978

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1253 PHYSICIST

Eduardo Suger

Born 1938

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1602 PHYSICIST

Verena Meyer

1929 - 2018

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1788 PHYSICIST

Willy Haeberli

Born 1925

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1892 PHYSICIST

Gianluca Ambrosetti

Born 1974

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2055 PHYSICIST

Rudolf Heinrich Hofmeister

1814 - 1887

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2203 PHYSICIST

Ernst Bucher

Born 1934

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2233 PHYSICIST

Christian Schönenberger

Born 1956

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