Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli or Ulricus Zuinglius (January 1, 1484 - October 11, 1531) was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches. Independent of Martin Luther, who was "doctor biblicus", Zwingli arrived at similar conclusions, by studying the Scriptures from the point of view of a humanist scholar. Zwingli was born in Wildhaus, St. Gallen, Switzerland, …

John Pell (March 1, 1611 - December 12, 1685), was an English mathematician. He was born at Southwick in Sussex, where his father was minister. He was educated at Steyning Grammar School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen. During his university career he became an accomplished linguist, and even before he took his M.A. degree (in 1630) corresponded with Henry Briggs and other mathematicians.

Rainer Maria Rilke is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th century poets. His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets. He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose.

Hermann Müller was a Swiss botanist and oenologist from the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. During his time working for the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute, he created the Müller-Thurgau in 1882, a variety of grape with high importance in winemaking and the most important breed of the last 125 years.

Hugo Ball was a German author and poet. Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg (1906–1907). In 1910, he moved to Berlin in order to become an actor and collaborated with Max Reinhardt. He was one of the leading Dada artists.

Johann Theodor Kaspar Rudolph Ambros Alois Xaver Ab Yberg or more compactly Theodor Ab Yberg (8 December 1795, Schwyz - 30 November 1869) was a Swiss statesman. Theodor is the son of alderman Alois Xaver Ab Yberg and his wife Maria Anna von Reding. He served in the Swiss Guard in Paris, but returned home in 1823. After having been member of the cantonal court, he was elected alderman in 1826.

Hans Ruedi Giger (born at Chur, Grisons canton, February 5, 1940) is an Academy Award-winning Swiss painter, sculptor, and set designer best known for his design work on the film "Alien".

Antoine-Henri, baron Jomini (March 6, 1779-March 24, 1869), general in the French and afterwards in the Russian service, and one of the most celebrated writers on the Napoleonic art of war, was born at Payerne in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, where his father was syndic.

Christoph von Graffenried (1661-1743) led a group of Swiss and Palatine Germans to North Carolina in 1710, and later authored "Relation of My American Project", an account of this unsuccessful attempt to settle in the New World. Graffenried was born November 15, 1661 in Bern, a German-speaking Canton of Switzerland, the eldest son of Anton von Graffenried (1639-1730) and Katharina Jenner (? -1669).

Franz von Werra (1914-1941) was a German World War II fighter pilot who was shot down over England and captured. He is generally regarded as the only Axis prisoner of war to succeed in escaping and returning to the "Reich", although in fact several others also succeeded in doing so. He was however the only German airman to perform the feat. Franz von Werra was born on 13 July, 1914, to impoverished Swiss parents in Leuk, a town in the Swiss canton of Valais.

Adrian von Bubenberg (born 1434 in Bern; died August 1479 in Bern) was a Bernese knight, general and mayor ("Schultheiss") of Bern in 1468-69, 1473-74 and 1477-79. In Switzerland, he is remembered as the hero of the Battle of Murten. Adrian von Bubenberg was born as the son of Heinrich IV. von Bubenberg, Schultheiss of Bern and lord of Spiez, whom he succeeded in 1465. He was knighted in 1466 during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the Holy Sepulchre.

Ralph Lewin (born May 21, 1953) is a Swiss politician and the former president of the Cantonal Executive of the Canton of Basel-City since 2004. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland. Lewin graduated from the University of Basel in 1977 with a degree in Sociology and Macroeconomics.

Eugen Huber was a Swiss jurist and creator of the Swiss civil code of 1907. Huber was born in Swiss Canton of Zürich on July 31, 1849. His father was a physician. At the University of Zurich, Huber studied jurisprudence, where he received a doctorate in 1872 with a thesis on "The Swiss law of inheritance in its development since the separation of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the German Reich." In 1875, …

Ludwig Pfyffer was a Swiss military leader, spokesman for Roman Catholic interests in the cantons, and probably the most important Swiss political figure in the latter half of the 16th century. For many years an active and intrepid warrior in the service of France, Pfyffer won fame by safely leading the royal family of Charles IX from Meaux to Paris while under Huguenot attack (1567).

Domenico Trezzini (ca. 1670-1734) was a Swiss-Italian architect who elaborated the Petrine Baroque style of Russian architecture. Domenico was born in Astano, near Lugano, in the Italian speaking Ticino (at that time administered by the German speaking cantons). He probably studied in Rome. Subsequently, as he was working in Denmark, he was offered by Peter I of Russia, among other architects, to design buildings in the new Russian capital city, St. Petersburg.

Paul Grüninger was the commander of police in the Canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. In August and September, 1938, following the Austrian Anschluss (annexation) of March, he provided falsely dated papers to some 3,601 Jewish refugees from the Nazis in Austria, permitting them to enter Switzerland. Once discovered (apparently also following denounciation by some Swiss Jews, as these had officially to pay for the maintenance of foreign refugees of the same religion), …

Ulrich von Zatzikhoven was the author of the Middle High German Arthurian romance "Lanzelet". Ulrich's name and his place of origin ("Zezikon" in Switzerland) are only known definitively from the work itself. However, it is generally accepted that Ulrich is the same person as a lay priest ("Leutpriester") from Lommis in the canton of Thurgau by the name of "Uolricus de Cecinchoven", who occurs as a witness to a deed of gift dated 29 March 1214, …

Antonio Ciseri (October 25, 1821 - March 8, 1891) was a Swiss artist. Ciseri was born in Ronco sopra Ascona in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland and trained in Florence under Niccola Benvenuti. His religious paintings are Raphaelesque in their compositional outlines and their polished surfaces, but are nearly photographic in effect. He fulfilled many important commissions from churches in Italy and Switzerland. Ciseri also painted a significant number of portraits.

Johann Stumpf (1500-1578) was an early writer on the history and topography of Switzerland. He was born at Bruchsal (near Karlsruhe), and was educated there and at Strasbourg and Heidelberg. In 1520 he became a cleric or chaplain in the order of the Knights Hospitaller. He was sent in 1521 to the preceptory of that order at Freiburg in Breisgau, ordained a priest at Basel, and in 1522 was placed in charge of the preceptory at Bubikon (north of Rapperswil, …

Johann George Tralles was a German mathematician and physicist. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, and was educated at the University of Göttingen beginning in 1783. He became a professor at the University of Bern in 1785. In 1810 he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Berlin. In 1798 he served as the Swiss representative to the French metric convocation, and was a member of its committee on weights and measures.

Juste Daniel Olivier, Swiss poet, was born near Nyon in the canton of Vaud; he was brought up as a peasant, but studied at the college of Nyon, and later at the academy of Lausanne. Though originally intended for the ministry, his poetic genius (foreshadowed by the prizes he obtained in 1825 and 1828 for poems on Marcos Botzaris and "Julia Alpinula" respectively) inclined him towards literary studies. He was named professor of literature at Neuchâtel (1830), …

Charles Follen (September 6, 1796 - January 13, 1840) was a German poet and patriot, who later moved to the United States and became the first professor of German at Harvard University, a Unitarian minister, and a radical abolitionist.

Johann August Nahl (22 August 1710 in Berlin - 22 October 1781 in Kassel) was a German sculptor and stuccist. He was first taught by his father Johann Samuel Nahl (1664-1727), who had been court sculptor of Frederic I since 1704. At the age of 18, Nahl undertook a journey via Sigmaringen and Bern to Strasbourg, where he worked for Robert Le Lorrain. In 1731 he went to Paris, then in 1734 to Rome, 1735 to Schaffhausen and then back to Strasbourg.

Corinne Hofmann is a Swiss author most famous for her multi-million selling memoir "Die weisse Massai" (The White Masai). Born on June 4, 1960 to German father and French mother, Corinne studied in the canton of Glarus and eventually went into the retail trade. At the age of twenty-one, she opened her own clothing store. In 1986, Hofmann and her fiancé Marco made a trip to Kenya. There, she met a Samburu warrior named Lketinga and instantly found him irresistible.

Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler was a Swiss physician, politician, and philosopher. Troxler studied in Jena and Göttingen. Among his teachers were Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. After earning his degree, he worked as a physician in Vienna where he befriended Ludwig van Beethoven and married Wilhelmine Polborn. During that time, Troxler discovered a phenomenon of visual perception that now bears his name, Troxler's fading.

Samuel Amsler (1791-1849), Swiss engraver, was born at Schinznach, in the canton of Aargau. He studied his art under Johan Heinrich Lips (1758-1817) and Karl Ernst Hess, at Munich, and from 1816 pursued it in Italy, and chiefly at Rome, till in 1829 he succeeded his former master Hess as professor of copper engraving in the Munich academy. The works he designed and engraved are remarkable for the grace of the figures, …

Urs Räber is a former Swiss alpine skier. In 1984, Räber won the World Cup in Downhill skiing. He now owns the Hotel Schönbuhl in Wilderswil near Interlaken in the Swiss canton of Berne.

Jürg M. Stauffer is a Swiss politician from Ittigen in the canton of Berne. From 2000 until November 26, 2004, he had been Secretary General of the conservative Young Swiss People's Party, the youth section of the Swiss People's Party. He quit this office after irregularities surrounding the financing of a party event were made public. Stauffer was a member of the Young Swiss People's party board from 1998 to 2005. During this period he recruited many new party members, …