The following list is composed of items, techniques and processes that were invented by or discovered by people from Switzerland.

Biology

Nucleic acid Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main ...

, DNA by

Friedrich Miescher Johannes Friedrich Miescher (13 August 1844 – 26 August 1895) was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first scientist to isolate nucleic acid in 1869. He also identified protamine and made a number of other discoveries. Miescher had i ...

(1868) *

Restriction endonuclease A restriction enzyme, restriction endonuclease, REase, ENase or'' restrictase '' is an enzyme that cleaves DNA into fragments at or near specific recognition sites within molecules known as restriction sites. Restriction enzymes are one class ...

Werner Arber Werner Arber (born 3 June 1929 in Gränichen, Aargau) is a Swiss microbiologist and geneticist. Along with American researchers Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the disco ...

* Research of the

Immune system The immune system is a network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases. It detects and responds to a wide variety of pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, as well as Tumor immunology, cancer cells and objects such ...

Rolf M. Zinkernagel Rolf Martin Zinkernagel (born 6 January 1944) is Professor of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for the discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infe ...

Chemistry

Laudanum Laudanum is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine). Laudanum is prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy (''Papaver somniferum Linnaeus'') in alcohol (ethanol). R ...

Paracelsus Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. H ...

Aluminium foil Aluminium foil (or aluminum foil in North American English; often informally called tin foil) is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves with a thickness less than ; thinner gauges down to are also commonly used. Standard household foil is typ ...

by Robert Victor Neher *

Cellophane Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and liquid water makes it useful for food packaging. Cellophane is highly permeable to water vapour, but may be coate ...

Jacques E. Brandenberger Jacques Edwin Brandenberger (19 October 1872 – 13 July 1954) was a Swiss chemist and textile engineer who in 1908 invented cellophane. He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal in 1937. Brandenberger was born in Zurich i ...

DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...

Paul Hermann Müller Paul Hermann Müller, also known as Pauly Mueller (12 January 1899 – 13 October 1965), was a Swiss chemist who received the 1948 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for his 1939 discovery of insecticidal qualities and use of DDT in the con ...

Lysergic acid diethylamide Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, v ...

(LSD) by

Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesi ...

* Reichstein process by

Tadeus Reichstein Tadeusz Reichstein (20 July 1897 – 1 August 1996) was a Polish-Swiss chemist and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate (1950), which was awarded for his work on the isolation of cortisone. Early life Reichstein was born into a Pol ...

Glyphosate Glyphosate (IUPAC name: ''N''-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate, which acts by inhibiting the plant enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshik ...

by Henri Martin

Clothes and Fashion

Velcro Velcro, officially known as Velcro IP Holdings LLC and trading as Velcro Companies, is a British privately held company, founded by Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral in the 1950s. It is the original manufacturer of hook-and-loop fast ...

George de Mestral George de Mestral () was a Swiss electrical engineer who invented the hook and loop fastener which he named Velcro. Biography He was born to Albert de Mestral, an agronomist engineer, and Marthe de Goumoëns in Saint Saphorin sur Morges, near ...

Computing

Computer mouse A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth ...

by René Sommer, co-inventor *

Smaky The Smaky is a line of mostly 8-bit personal computers and accompanying operating system developed by Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud and others at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland beginning in 1974. The computers ...

Jean-Daniel Nicoud Jean-Daniel Nicoud (born 31 August 1938), is a Swiss computer scientist, noted for inventing of a computer mouse with an optical encoder and the CALM (Common Assembly Language for microprocessors). He obtained a degree in physics at the Éco ...

* programming language Pascal by

Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth (born 15 February 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist. He has designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally ...

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

at CERN

Cuisine

Muesli Muesli ( ) is a cold breakfast dish, the primary ingredient of which is rolled oats, which is set to soak overnight and eaten the next morning. Most often, additional ingredients such as grains, nuts, seeds, and fresh or dried fruits, are added ...

Maximilian Bircher-Benner Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, M.D. (22 August 1867 – 24 January 1939) was a Swiss physician and a pioneer nutritionist credited for popularizing muesli and raw food vegetarianism. Biography Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner was born on 22 Au ...

White chocolate White chocolate is a confectionery typically made of sugar, milk, and cocoa butter. It is pale ivory colored, and lacks many of the compounds found in milk and dark chocolates. It is solid at room temperature because the melting point of cocoa ...

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, sin ...

Immersion blender An immersion blender, also known as a stick blender, mini blender, hand blender, or wand blender, is a kitchen blade grinder used to blend ingredients or purée food in the container in which they are being prepared. The immersion blender was in ...

Roger Perrinjaquet Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ( ...

Hazelnut The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus '' Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species '' Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts accordi ...

chocolate by

Charles-Amédée Kohler Charles-Amédée Kohler (born Charles-Gottlieb Kohler; 15 June 1790 – 15 September 1874) was a Swiss chocolatier and entrepreneur who founded Chocolat Kohler. He notably invented hazelnut chocolate, in his factory opened in 1830 in Lausanne. ...

Conching upright=1.35, Conche (in the Imhoff-Schokoladenmuseum) Conching is a process used in the manufacture of chocolate whereby a surface scraping mixer and agitator, known as a conche, evenly distributes cocoa butter within chocolate and may act ...

by Rudolf Lindt *

Milk chocolate Milk chocolate is a solid chocolate confectionery containing cocoa, sugar and milk. Chocolate was originally sold and consumed as a beverage in pre-Columbian times, and upon its introduction to Western Europe. Major milk chocolate producers in ...

Daniel Peter Daniel Peter (9 March 1836 – 4 November 1919) was a Swiss chocolatier and entrepreneur who founded Peter's Chocolate. A neighbour of Henri Nestlé in Vevey, he was one of the first chocolatiers to make milk chocolate and is credited for inven ...

(disputed) *

Absinthe Absinthe (, ) is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from several plants, including the flowers and leaves of ''Artemisia absinthium'' ("grand wormwood"), together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Historic ...

Economics

* Discovery of economic cycles and propagation of

Social policy Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies which aim to improve or reform society. Some professionals and universities consider social policy a subset of public policy, while other practitioners characterize soci ...

against the classic liberal economy by Simonde de Sismondi *

Bank secrecy Banking secrecy, alternately known as financial privacy, banking discretion, or bank safety,Guex (2000), p. 240 is a conditional agreement between a bank and its clients that all foregoing activities remain secure, confidential, and private. Mo ...

Medicine

Diclofenac Diclofenac, sold under the brand name Voltaren, among others, is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat pain and inflammatory diseases such as gout. It is taken by mouth or rectally in a suppository, used by injection, o ...

(''Voltaren'') (1973, company Ciba-Geigy) *

Panthenol Panthenol (also called pantothenol) is the alcohol analog of pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), and is thus a provitamin of B5. In organisms, it is quickly oxidized to pantothenic acid. It is a viscous transparent liquid at room temperature. Pantheno ...

(''Bepanthen'') (1944, company Roche)

Military

* Swiss Army knife *

Full Metal Jacket bullet A full metal jacket (FMJ) bullet is a small-arms projectile consisting of a soft core (often lead) encased in an outer shell ("jacket") of harder metal, such as gilding metal, cupronickel, or, less commonly, a steel alloy. A bullet jacket usu ...

Physics

Argand lamp The Argand lamp is a type of oil lamp invented in 1780 by Aimé Argand. Its output is 6 to 10 candelas, brighter than that of earlier lamps. Its more complete combustion of the candle wick and oil than in other lamps required much less frequ ...

Aimé Argand François-Pierre-Amédée Argand, known as Ami Argand (5 July 1750 – 14 or 24 October 1803) was a Genevan physicist and chemist. He invented the Argand lamp, a great improvement on the traditional oil lamp. Early years Francois-Pierre-Améd ...

Twisted nematic field effect The twisted nematic effect (''TN-effect'') was a main technology breakthrough that made LCDs practical. Unlike earlier displays, TN-cells did not require a current to flow for operation and used low operating voltages suitable for use with batteri ...

Hoffmann-La Roche F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, commonly known as Roche, is a Swiss multinational healthcare company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. Its holding company, Roche Holding AG, has shares listed on the SIX ...

Scanning tunneling microscope A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 ...

Heinrich Rohrer Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst ...

(co-inventor with German

Gerd Binnig Gerd Binnig (; born 20 July 1947) is a German physicist. He is most famous for having won the Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Heinrich Rohrer in 1986 for the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. Early life and education Binnig w ...

) *

Super-twisted nematic display Pioneering passive-matrix STN LCD, Brown Boveri, Switzerland, 1984 A super-twisted nematic display (STN) is a type of monochrome passive-matrix liquid crystal display (LCD). History This type of LCD was invented at the Brown Boveri Research ...

Brown, Boveri & Cie Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In ...

Swatch Internet Time Swatch Internet Time (or ) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches. Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided into 1,000 parts ...

Swatch Swatch is a Swiss watch, Swiss watchmaker founded in 1983 by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock, and Jacques Müller. It is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group. The Swatch product line was developed as a response to the "quartz crisis" of the 1970s and 1980 ...

* Research on

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

Kurt Wüthrich Kurt Wüthrich (born 4 October 1938 in Aarberg, Canton of Bern) is a Swiss chemist/biophysicist and Nobel Chemistry laureate, known for developing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods for studying biological macromolecules. Education and ...

Sports

Bobsleigh Bobsleigh or bobsled is a team winter sport that involves making timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh. International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Fe ...

Schwingen (from German ' "to swing"), also known as Swiss wrestling (French ') and natively (and colloquially) as ' (Swiss German for "breeches-lifting"), is a style of folk wrestling native to Switzerland, more specifically the pre-alpine parts of Ger ...

Hornussen Hornussen is an indigenous Swiss sport. The sport gets its name from the puck which is known as a "Hornuss" ( hornet) or "Nouss". When hit, it can whizz through the air at up to 300 km/h (186.4 mph) and create a buzzing sound. Together wit ...

Technology

Constant escapement An escapement is a mechanical linkage in mechanical watches and clocks that gives impulses to the timekeeping element and periodically releases the gear train to move forward, advancing the clock's hands. The impulse action transfers energy to ...

Girard-Perregaux Girard-Perregaux SA () is a luxury Swiss watch ''manufacture'' with its origins dating back to 1791. Since 2011, the Swiss holding group of Girard-Perregaux, Sowind Group, has been a subsidiary of the French luxury group Kering. Headquartered in ...

Cross-beat escapement An escapement is a mechanical linkage in mechanical watches and clocks that gives impulses to the timekeeping element and periodically releases the gear train to move forward, advancing the clock's hands. The impulse action transfers energy to ...

and

remontoire In mechanical horology, a remontoire (from the French ''remonter'', meaning 'to wind') is a small secondary source of power, a weight or spring, which runs the timekeeping mechanism and is itself periodically rewound by the timepiece's main power so ...

for watches by

Jost Bürgi Jost Bürgi (also ''Joost, Jobst''; Latinized surname ''Burgius'' or ''Byrgius''; 28 February 1552 – 31 January 1632), active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, a maker of astronomical instruments and a ma ...

LCD projector An LCD projector is a type of video projector for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or other flat surface. It is a modern equivalent of the slide projector or overhead projector. To display images, LCD (liquid-crystal display) ...

Brown Boveri & Cie Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1 ...

Riggenbach rack system A rack railway (also rack-and-pinion railway, cog railway, or cogwheel railway) is a steep grade railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with ...

Niklaus Riggenbach Niklaus Riggenbach (21 May 1817 – 25 July 1899) was the inventor of the Riggenbach rack system and the counter-pressure brake. He was also an engineer and locomotive builder. Niklaus Riggenbach, from Rünenberg, Basel-Landschaft, Sw ...

Solar Impulse Solar Impulse is a Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft project, and also the name of the project's two operational aircraft. The privately financed project is led by Swiss engineer and businessman André Borschberg and Swiss ...

by Bertrand Piccard in co-operation with EPFL *

Tourbillon In horology, a tourbillon (; " whirlwind") is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy. It was developed around 1795 and patented by the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet on June 26, 1801. In a tourbi ...

Abraham-Louis Breguet Abraham-Louis Breguet (10 January 1747 – 17 September 1823), born in Neuchâtel, then a Prussian principality, was a horologist who made many innovations in the course of a career in watchmaking industry. He was the founder of the Bregue ...

Turbocharger In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pr ...

Alfred Büchi Alfred Büchi (July 11, 1879 – October 27, 1959) was a Swiss engineer and inventor. He was best known as the inventor of turbocharging. Büchi was born July 11, 1879, in Winterthur, Switzerland, growing up there and in Ludwigshafen. He w ...

Transportation

Bathyscaphe Trieste ''Trieste'' is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe which reached a record depth of about in the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench near Guam in the Pacific. On 23 January 1960, Jacques Piccard (son of the boa ...

Auguste Piccard Auguste Antoine Piccard (28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer known for his record-breaking hydrogen balloon flights, with which he studied the Earth's upper atmosphere. Piccard was also known for his ...

Articulated locomotive An articulated locomotive is a steam locomotive (rarely, an electric locomotive) with one or more engine units that can move independent of the main frame. Articulation allows the operation of locomotives that would otherwise be too large to neg ...

Anatole Mallet Jules Theodore Anatole Mallet (23 May 1837 – 10 October 1919) was a Swiss mechanical engineer, who was the inventor of the first successful compound system for a railway steam locomotive, patented in 1874. He is known for having invented three i ...

Miscellaneous

* The Red Cross by

Henry Dunant Henry Dunant (born Jean-Henri Dunant; 8 May 182830 October 1910), also known as Henri Dunant, was a Swiss humanitarian, businessman, and social activist. He was the visionary, promoter, and co-founder of the Red Cross. In 1901, he received the ...

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swiss Inventions And Discoveries Inventions and discoveries Switzerland