Famous Swiss Educators

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was a Swiss educational reformer and pedagogue. He is credited with establishing several educational institutions in French- and German-speaking regions of Switzerland. He also came up with many works explaining his modern principles of education. Thanks to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Switzerland was able to overcome illiteracy as early as 1830.

Remembered for pioneering the eurythmics approach of learning music, Swiss composer Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was a major figure of the modernist movement in music. Starting his career as a professor at the Geneva Conservatory, he later launched his own music school, which was later shut down by the Nazis.

A professor of ecological economics and industrial ecology, Julia Steinberger had been associated with the universities of Leeds and Zurich before joining the University of Lausanne. The daughter of Nobel-winning physicist Jack Steinberger, Julia has also led the award-winning research project Living Well Within Limits and supports Greta Thunberg’s climate activism.

Swiss mathematician and Princeton professor Armand Borel is remembered as a co-creator of the theory of linear algebraic groups. He also had a strong connection with France, having been a student of French mathematician Jean Leray and having been named a foreign member of the Académie des Sciences.

Waldo R. Tobler was an American-Swiss cartographer and geographer. He is best remembered for proposing the first and the second law of geography. Waldo R. Tobler is also remembered for his association with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, where he was a senior scientist and one of the main investigators.

The daughter of renowned Genevan scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, Albertine Necker de Saussure conducted experiments and maintained journals in her childhood. Following her marriage to a university lecturer, she remained a strong supporter of women’s education and even penned notes for her husband’s lectures. She is remembered for her iconic work l'Education Progressive.

Born to a prominent Swiss physician and physicist, Auguste Arthur de la Rive initially served as the chair of natural philosophy at the University of Geneva, where his father had worked. He later came to be known for his research on the electrochemical reaction in batteries.