ETH News

Heinrich Ursprung was President of ETH Zurich from 1973 to 1987. He led the bilateral negotiations between Switzerland and the EU in the field of research in his capacity as State Secretary in the 1990s. This influential figure in the Swiss higher education landscape passed away shortly before his 92nd birthday.

Computer pioneer Niklaus Wirth died on 1 January 2024, just weeks before his 90th birthday. The long-serving ETH Professor of Computer Science achieved world fame by developing the Pascal programming language in the 1970s. In 1984, he became the only German-speaking computer scientist yet to have received the Turing Award, which is regarded as the Nobel Prize for computer science.

ETH Zurich mourns the death of materials scientist Ueli W. Suter, ETH Professor Emeritus and former Vice President Research. A personal obituary by his long-time colleague Nicholas Spencer, Professor Emeritus of Surface Science and Technology.

The 1991 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, ETH Professor Emeritus Richard Ernst, has died at the age of 87. ETH Zurich mourns the loss of a man with an extremely broad range of interests and commitments.