The Most Famous

MATHEMATICIANS from Switzerland

Icon of occuation in country

This page contains a list of the greatest Swiss Mathematicians. The pantheon dataset contains 828 Mathematicians, 19 of which were born in Switzerland. This makes Switzerland the birth place of the 9th most number of Mathematicians behind Poland and Ukraine.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Swiss Mathematicians of all time. This list of famous Swiss Mathematicians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Swiss Mathematicians.

Photo of Leonhard Euler

1. Leonhard Euler (1707 - 1783)

With an HPI of 87.94, Leonhard Euler is the most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 145 different languages on wikipedia.

Leonhard Euler ( OY-lər; German: [ˈɔʏlɐ] (listen); 15 April 1707 – 18 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 many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory. Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Carl Friedrich Gauss remarked: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it." Euler is also widely considered to be the most prolific; his more than 850 publications are collected in 92 quarto volumes, (including his Opera Omnia) more than anyone else in the field. He spent most of his adult life in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia. Euler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter π (lowercase pi) to denote Archimedes' constant (the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter), as well as first employing the term f(x) to describe a function's y-axis, the letter i to express the imaginary unit √-1, and the Greek letter Σ (capital sigma) to express summations. He gave the current definition of the constant e, the base of the natural logarithm, still known as Euler's number. Euler was also the first practitioner of graph theory (partly as a solution for the problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg). He became famous – among others – for solving the Basel Problem, after proving that the sum of the infinite series of squared integer reciprocals equaled exactly, π 2/6 and for discovering that the sum of the numbers of edges and faces minus vertices of a polyhedron equals 2, a number now commonly known as the Euler characteristic. In the field of physics, Euler reformulated Newton's laws of physics into new laws in his two-volume work Mechanica to explain the motion of rigid bodies more easily. He also made substantial contributions to the study of elastic deformations of solid objects.

Photo of Johann Bernoulli

2. Johann Bernoulli (1667 - 1748)

With an HPI of 78.07, Johann Bernoulli is the 2nd most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 64 different languages.

Johann Bernoulli (also known as Jean or John; 6 August [O.S. 27 July] 1667 – 1 January 1748) was a Swiss mathematician and was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He is known for his contributions to infinitesimal calculus and educating Leonhard Euler in the pupil's youth.

Photo of Jacob Bernoulli

3. Jacob Bernoulli (1654 - 1705)

With an HPI of 75.25, Jacob Bernoulli is the 3rd most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 66 different languages.

Jacob Bernoulli (also known as James or Jacques; 6 January 1655 [O.S. 27 December 1654] – 16 August 1705) was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family. He was an early proponent of Leibnizian calculus and sided with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy. He is known for his numerous contributions to calculus, and along with his brother Johann, was one of the founders of the calculus of variations. He also discovered the fundamental mathematical constant e. However, his most important contribution was in the field of probability, where he derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi.

Photo of Gabriel Cramer

4. Gabriel Cramer (1704 - 1752)

With an HPI of 72.44, Gabriel Cramer is the 4th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Gabriel Cramer (French: [kʁamɛʁ]; 31 July 1704 – 4 January 1752) was a Genevan mathematician. He was the son of physician Jean Cramer and Anne Mallet Cramer.

Photo of Jost Bürgi

5. Jost Bürgi (1552 - 1632)

With an HPI of 70.90, Jost Bürgi is the 5th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

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 mathematician.

Photo of Paul Guldin

6. Paul Guldin (1577 - 1643)

With an HPI of 69.03, Paul Guldin is the 6th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Paul Guldin (original name Habakkuk Guldin; 12 June 1577 (Mels) – 3 November 1643 (Graz)) was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer. He discovered the Guldinus theorem to determine the surface and the volume of a solid of revolution. (This theorem is also known as the Pappus–Guldinus theorem and Pappus's centroid theorem, attributed to Pappus of Alexandria.) Guldin was noted for his association with the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler. Guldin composed a critique of Cavalieri's method of Indivisibles.Although of Jewish descent, his parents were Protestants and they brought Guldin up in that faith. He was a professor of mathematics in Graz and Vienna. In Paolo Casati's astronomical work Terra machinis mota (1658), Casati imagines a dialogue among Guldin, Galileo, and Marin Mersenne on various intellectual problems of cosmology, geography, astronomy and geodesy.

Photo of Jakob Steiner

7. Jakob Steiner (1796 - 1863)

With an HPI of 68.94, Jakob Steiner is the 7th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Jakob Steiner (18 March 1796 – 1 April 1863) was a Swiss mathematician who worked primarily in geometry.

Photo of Jean-Robert Argand

8. Jean-Robert Argand (1768 - 1822)

With an HPI of 67.14, Jean-Robert Argand is the 8th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Jean-Robert Argand (UK: , US: , French: [ʒɑ̃ ʁɔbɛʁ aʁɡɑ̃]; July 18, 1768 – August 13, 1822) was an amateur mathematician. In 1806, while managing a bookstore in Paris, he published the idea of geometrical interpretation of complex numbers known as the Argand diagram and is known for the first rigorous proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra.

Photo of Nicolaus II Bernoulli

9. Nicolaus II Bernoulli (1695 - 1726)

With an HPI of 67.02, Nicolaus II Bernoulli is the 9th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Nicolaus II Bernoulli, a.k.a. Niklaus Bernoulli, Nikolaus Bernoulli (6 February 1695, Basel, Switzerland – 31 July 1726, St. Petersburg, Russia) was a Swiss mathematician as were his father Johann Bernoulli and one of his brothers, Daniel Bernoulli. He was one of the many prominent mathematicians in the Bernoulli family.

Photo of Jacques Charles François Sturm

10. Jacques Charles François Sturm (1803 - 1855)

With an HPI of 66.71, Jacques Charles François Sturm is the 10th most famous Swiss Mathematician.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Jacques Charles François Sturm (29 September 1803 – 15 December 1855) was a French mathematician.

People

Pantheon has 19 people classified as mathematicians born between 1552 and 1975. Of these 19, 1 (5.26%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living mathematicians include Martin Hairer. The most famous deceased mathematicians include Leonhard Euler, Johann Bernoulli, and Jacob Bernoulli.

Living Mathematicians

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Deceased Mathematicians

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Overlapping Lives

Which Mathematicians were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 10 most globally memorable Mathematicians since 1700.

  • Datawheel