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Born to a businessman and diplomat father in Bulgaria, Fritz Zwicky was initially sent to Switzerland to study commerce but ended up deviating to math and physics. He then moved to the U.S. to work with Caltech and gained fame for his research on what he called the supernova.
Johann Heinrich Lambert was a Swiss polymath whose contributions to the fields of physics, mathematics, map projections, astronomy, and philosophy are considered important by many scholars. He is credited with introducing hyperbolic functions into trigonometry. He is also credited with inventing a hygrometer, which is used to measure the quantity of water vapor in soil and air.
A close associate of Isaac Newton, Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, was, according to many, the reason for Newton’s nervous breakdown after they fell apart. He is best remembered for co-discovering the phenomenon of zodiacal light and for inventing the shadow theory of gravitation.
Astronaut Claude Nicollier scripted history by becoming the first Swiss person to travel into space. His 4 Space Shuttle missions include 2 missions for the servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope. He has also held electrical engineering and spatial technology classes at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne.
Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf initially taught math and physics at the University of Bern and later switched to teaching astronomy. He then joined both the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Best remembered for his studies on sunspot activity, he established what are now known as Wolf’s sunspot numbers.
