Solar Impulse SI2 pilote Bertrand Piccard Payerne November 2014

Science and technology in Switzerland play an important role in the Swiss economy, which has very few

natural resources Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. ...

that are available in the country. The Swiss National Science Foundation, mandated by the Federal government, is the most important institute for promoting scientific research. The raw output of scientific research from Switzerland consistently ranks within the top 20. Switzerland was ranked 1st in the Global Innovation Index in 2021

Institutions

Universities

The first university, the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universitie ...

, was founded in 1460 and today the country has twelve universities. *

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS) ...

University of Bern The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It is a compreh ...

, Bern *

University of Fribourg The University of Fribourg (french: Université de Fribourg; german: Universität Freiburg) is a public university located in Fribourg, Switzerland. The roots of the university can be traced back to 1580, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisi ...

Fribourg , Location of , Location of () () or , ; or , ; gsw, label=Swiss German, Frybùrg ; it, Friburgo or ; rm, Friburg. is the capital of the Cantons of Switzerland, Swiss canton of Canton of Fribourg, Fribourg and district of Sarine (district), ...

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centur ...

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

* University of Neuchâtel,

Neuchâtel Neuchâtel (, , ; german: Neuenburg) is the capital of the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, situated on the shoreline of Lake Neuchâtel. Since the fusion in 2021 of the municipalities of Neuchâtel, Corcelles-Cormondrèche, Peseux, and Valangin, ...

* University of Lausanne (UNIL),

Lausanne Lausanne ( , , , ) ; it, Losanna; rm, Losanna. is the capital and largest city of the Swiss French speaking canton of Vaud. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway between the Jura Mountains and the Alps, and fac ...

* University of Lucerne,

Lucerne Lucerne ( , ; High Alemannic: ''Lozärn'') or Luzern ()Other languages: gsw, Lozärn, label= Lucerne German; it, Lucerna ; rm, Lucerna . is a city in central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of the country. Lucerne is the capital o ...

* University of Lugano,

Lugano Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...

* University of St. Gallen (HSG), St. Gallen *

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 ...

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich () i ...

* Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich),

* Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL),

Research institutes

Agroscope Agroscope is the Swiss Confederation's center of excellence for agricultural research and is affiliated with the Federal Office for Agriculture, which is subordinate to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. Agrosco ...

Changins-Wädenswil (ACW) *

Liebefeld-Posieux (ALP) *

Reckenholz-Tänikon (ART) * European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) * Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS),

Manno Manno is a municipality in the district of Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. History Manno is first mentioned in 1184. In 1298, the Bishop of Como owned estates in the village. In 1335, the village divided into two sections, M ...

* Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) * Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) ** Swiss Light Source * Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) * Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) * Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)
Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET)
* Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) *

Idiap Research Institute The Idiap Research Institute is a semi-private non-profit research institute at Martigny in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Valais, in south-western Switzerland. It conducts research in the areas of speech processing, computer vision, info ...

* Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research (IDSIA) *

Swiss Institute of Comparative Law The Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (french: Institut suisse de droit comparé (ISDC), german: Schweizerisches Institut für Rechtsvergleichung) is an agency of the federal administration of Switzerland charged with research and consultancy ...

Kurt Bösch University Institute (IUKB)

Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS)
* Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) * Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) * Swiss Finance Institute *

International Institute for Management Development (IMD) International Institute for Management Development (IMD) is a private business school in Lausanne, Switzerland specializes in executive education offering open enrollment programs for senior executives, as well as longer-term educational engagem ...

* Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) * Sempach Bird Observatory *

Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research The Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF) was founded in 1988 as an institution of the foundation Schweizerisches Forschungsinstitut für Hochgebirgsklima und Medizin SFI in Davos, Switzerland. SIAF is located at the Medicine Campus ...

Swiss Nanoscience Institute
* Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research * Campus Biotech *

Research Institute of Organic Agriculture The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (German: ''Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau'', in short: FiBL), is an organic farming information and research centres. As an independent and non-profit organization, it promotes research ...

Museums

* The Swiss Science Center Technorama is a unique Science museum in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality ...

Winterthur , neighboring_municipalities = Brütten, Dinhard, Elsau, Hettlingen, Illnau-Effretikon, Kyburg, Lindau, Neftenbach, Oberembrach, Pfungen, Rickenbach, Schlatt, Seuzach, Wiesendangen, Zell , twintowns = Hall in Tirol (Austri ...

in the canton of Zürich.

Researchers

With 57% of its researchers coming from other countries, Switzerland is the country with the world highest proportion of foreign researchers. Olivier Dessibourg, "La Suisse, carrefour de la circulation des cerveaux", ''

Le Temps ''Le Temps'' (literally "The Time") is a Swiss French-language daily newspaper published in Berliner format in Geneva by Le Temps SA. It is the sole nationwide French-language non-specialised daily newspaper of Switzerland. Since 2021, it has ...

'', Thursday 15 November 2012, p. 14.

Scientific

Astronomy and space program

Switzerland Space Agency, the Swiss Space Office, has been involved in various space technologies and programs. In addition it was one of the 10 founders of the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies are implicated in the space industry such as

RUAG Space Beyond Gravity is the space-oriented segment of the Swiss technology group RUAG. At a total of fourteen sites in Switzerland ( Zurich, Emmen and Nyon), Sweden (Gothenburg, Linköping), Finland ( Tampere), Germany ( Coswig), USA ( Denver, ...

(payload fairings) or Maxon Motors (mars rovers). Claude Nicollier is a Swiss Astronaut and flew several missions with the United States space program. In the field of astronomy, Michel Mayor discovered in 1995, 51 Pegasi B, the first

extrasolar planet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

orbiting a sun-like star.

Mathematics

Leonhard Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...

is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. A statement attributed to

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function. The Bernoulli family produced many notable scientists ( Bernoulli number,

Bernoulli's principle In fluid dynamics, Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in static pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy. The principle is named after the Swiss mathematic ...

, Bernoulli's rule...).

Physics

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

(naturalized in 1901) was one of the greatest physicists of all time. He is known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation ''E'' = ''mc''² and also contributed in many other areas (

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophe ...

, solid state physics). Einstein was named "

Person of the Century ''Time'' 100: The Most Important People of the Century is a compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people, published in ''Time'' magazine in 1999. The idea for such a list started on February 1, 1998, with a debate at a symposium ...

" by ''Time''. More recently, in 1987, Karl Alexander Müller received the Nobel prize for his work on High-temperature superconductivity. Furthermore, the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is located in Switzerland near

Chemistry

In the field of chemistry

Germain Henri Hess Germain Henri Hess (russian: Герман Иванович Гесс, German Ivanovich Gess; 7 August 1802 – 30 November 1850) was a Swiss-Russian chemist and doctor who formulated Hess's law, an early principle of thermochemistry. Early l ...

is known for his discovery of the Hess's law. Albert Hofmann discovered the

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). Paul Hermann Müller received the Nobel prize for his discovery of the insecticidal qualities of DDT.

Engineering

According to one EPFL source, globally, 4 out of the 20 top labs in the field of AI are located in Switzerland.

Biological and earth sciences

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 ...

was a Swiss physician who was the first researcher to isolate and characterize Nucleic acid (DNA). Today, a research institute in Basel (the Friedrich Miescher Institute, FMI) is named after him.

Emil Theodor Kocher Emil Theodor Kocher (25 August 1841 – 27 July 1917) was a Swiss physician and medical researcher who received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. Among his many ...

(Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1909) was known for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. The neurologist

Walter Rudolf Hess Walter Rudolf Hess (17 March 1881 – 12 August 1973) was a Swiss physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for mapping the areas of the brain involved in the control of internal organs. He shared the prize with Eg ...

(Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949) mapped the areas of the brain that were responsible for the control of several vital bodily functions. The biochemist Werner Arber (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1978) is known for his discovery of restriction endonucleases which are essential for all modern biotechnology. The Swiss born Edmond H. Fischer (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1992) discovered how reversible

phosphorylation In chemistry, phosphorylation is the attachment of a phosphate group to a molecule or an ion. This process and its inverse, dephosphorylation, are common in biology and could be driven by natural selection. Text was copied from this source, ...

works as a switch to activate proteins.

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 ...

(Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1996) is famous for his work on 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 ...

Psychology

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...

(1875–1961) was a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri *Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internati ...

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their ...

and the founder of

Analytical Psychology Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration.

Notes and references

Swiss technology powers Mars mission, Swissinfo.ch

Oerlikon Space

External links

Official portal of Swiss universities

All Swiss university programmes

myScience.ch Swiss portal for research and innovation

The State Secretariat for Education and Research

The Ranking Forum of Swiss Universities
{{DEFAULTSORT:Science And Technology In Switzerland