How Switzerland invented rankings and became a nation of science

ETH News: In your book «Die Naturforschenden» [The Natural Scientists], you write that Switzerland has been regarded as one of the most successful science nations since the 18th century. What are the historical bases of that success?
Schär: That's a difficult question for historians to answer, because it depends on how "success" is defined. These definitions are subject to the vicissitudes of historical change. As historians we can say this: the history of scientific definitions of success and scientific rankings is, to an astonishing degree, associated with the history of Swiss science.

What do you mean?
Schär: It was a botanist from Geneva who, in 1873, published the first scientific rankings in history. In his "Histoire des Sciences", Alphonse de Candolle asked how scientific success could be determined objectively. To answer that question, he looked at who had been named as honorary members by the leading science academies such as the French Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society. From this list he compiled a database that extended from the founding of the Royal Society in 1660 to the year 1870.

And what did his work reveal?
Schär: Since the 17th century, the academies had named a disproportionate number of Swiss scientists as honorary members. Switzerland, which at that time comprised only about one percent of the European population, accounted for roughly ten percent of the honorary members. So proportionate to population size, Switzerland was indisputably at the top of the rankings.

Were Alphonse de Candolle's contemporaries aware of the international significance of the natural sciences?
Schär: No, he was the first person to empirically establish how well represented Switzerland was in the international sciences. Although the rise of nationalism did also play a role in that. Other countries created other rankings using different criteria, in which they came out on top.

Pfäffli: Talk of Switzerland as a highly successful science nation took off in the 19th century and has persisted to the present day. In the Cold War era, the neutrality idea was also a compelling motif. Swiss natural scientists regarded themselves as objective, neutral researchers who kept out of politics and were dedicated solely to science. Neutrality was a selling point and also opened doors for Swiss scientists.

Can you give an example?
Pfäffli: Robert Haefeli, Professor of Glaciology at ETH Zurich, initiated the "International Greenland Expedition" in the 1950s. Some 70 scientists and technicians conducted research on the island for three years. Haefeli's writings indicate that he felt it was his calling to lead this major international expedition. He viewed Swiss neutrality as an ideal precondition for bringing the former enemies from Germany and France together on the ice cap. He simply ignored the fact that Greenland was a laboratory of the Cold War. The Americans and Russians had positioned defensive missiles in the Arctic. The "neutral" Swiss scientists used the US Army's infrastructure, and the Americans relied on the glaciological expertise of the Swiss in building city-like, subterranean facilities in Greenland.

The ETH library image archive has a photo showing another polar researcher, Alfred de Quervain, and his team with a Swiss flag blowing in the wind...
Pfäffli: That photo shows the crossing of Greenland led by Swiss geophysicist and Arctic researcher Alfred de Quervain in 1912. The expedition came at the time of the colonialist race to the Polar regions. While de Quervain also conducted his research in the global context, he did symbolically plant the Swiss flag in the areas he travelled to. He even named an entire area in Greenland "Schweizerland". Swiss scientists also made similar colonialist gestures in Asia or Africa. As adventure stories, the tales were very well received back home in Switzerland.

Such mechanisms of international collaboration mixed with competition are still at play today: with ERC grants, for example, one still compares how many are won by Switzerland in relation to other countries.
Schär: The criteria that define what makes a successful science nation have naturally changed since the 19th century. But what has remained is the simultaneous cooperation and competition within the international scientific system. The Swiss natural sciences are still very much active in the international networks – not least in numerous projects in the southern hemisphere.

Bernhard C. Schär is a post-doctoral fellow with the Chair for History of the Modern World at ETH Zurich. His research focusses on the history of the sciences and colonial history and the global history of Switzerland. Most recently he published work on Swiss natural scientists during the period of Dutch colonial imperialism in South-east Asia around the turn of the 20th century.

Lea Pfäffli is a doctoral student with the Chair for History of Technology. Her research concentrates on the history of polar exploration, its material culture and global circulation. Most recently she worked on an exhibition on the history of knowledge in German studies.