Abstract

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH ranks among the world’s leading universities. Since the institute’s founding in Zurich in 1855, hundreds and thousands of professors, undergraduates, and graduate students in engineering and the sciences have crossed paths in its halls, filling them with life. The product of all this coming and going has been an astonishingly diverse academic, economic, and political culture – ETH became simultaneously an engine of the country’s modernization and a laboratory for its society. This book presents a meticulously researched historical account of this academic culture and offers a deep insight into the forces which, over a span of 150 years, have been transforming Switzerland’s future.