Culture of Switzerland - Science

Science

Main article: Science and technology in Switzerland

There has been a long tradition of Swiss scientists ever since Paracelsus (real name Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim). Paracelsus introduced the field of chemistry into medicine in the 16th century. The Bernoulli family from Basel is known for their significant contributions to mathematics over a time span of three generations. Leonhard Euler is another innovative mathematician. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure was a naturalist and pioneer in Alpine studies. The Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich has produced a great number of Nobel Prize winners. Ferdinand de Saussure was an important contributor to the field of linguistics. Physicist Albert Einstein, born in Germany, moved to Switzerland in 1895 at the age of 16 and became a Swiss citizen in 1901.

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Famous quotes containing the word science:

    “The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.”
    —Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    “My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat—a boat which, to revert to Neurath’s figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.”
    —Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)