Richard Martin Willstätter FRS(For) HFRSE (German pronunciation: [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvɪlˌʃtɛtɐ] , 13 August 1872 – 3 August 1942) was a German organic chemist whose study of the structure of plant pigments, chlorophyll included, won him the 1915 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Willstätter invented paper chromatography following the initial description of the separation technique by Mikhail Tsvet.
Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs (6 February 1834 – 23 October 1913) was a German-Swiss microbiologist. He is mainly known for his work on infectious diseases. His works paved the way for the beginning of modern bacteriology, and inspired Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. He was the first to identify a bacterium that causes diphtheria, which was called Klebs–Loeffler bacterium (now Corynebacterium diphtheriae). He was the father of physician Arnold Klebs.
Oscar Nitzchke (August 29, 1900 – February 11, 1991) was an architect, best known for designing the United Nations headquarters in New York and the Los Angeles Opera House.
Nitzchke was born in Altona, Germany, and grew up in Switzerland. In 1920 he moved to Paris to enter the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, but left the school in 1922 to work with Le Corbusier. He came to New York in 1938 to work with the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz, and later moved on to Jim Nash Associates, where he was made head of design. He retired in the early 1970s. In his retirement Nitzchke moved back to Paris, and died in the suburb Ivry-sur-Seine.
Heinrich Jacoby (1889–1964), originally a musician, was a German educator whose teaching was based on developing sensitivity and awareness. His collaboration with his colleague Elsa Gindler (1885–1961), whom he met in 1924 in Berlin, played a great role in his researches. With the advent of Nazism in 1933 Jacoby was forced to leave Germany, but he continued his work in Switzerland.
Jacoby and Moshe Feldenkrais were among a small group of European 20th-century innovators who emphasized the "self" in self-development, so that as in the zen inspired arts such as archery or judo, or even flower arranging, a skill was not an end in itself. Practicing a skill was a path to greater awareness.
The work of Heinrich Jacoby influenced body psychotherapy through the workshops that Charlotte Selver (1901–2003), a student of Jacoby and Gindler, gave to major body psychotherapists at the Esalen Institute in the 1960s.
Helmar Lerski (18 February 1871, in Strasbourg – 19 September 1956, in Zürich) was a photographer who laid some of the important foundations of modern photography. His works are on display in the USA, Germany, Israel and Switzerland. He focused mainly on portraits and the technique of photography with mirrors.
His real name was Israel Schmuklerski. In 1876, the family moved to Zürich, Switzerland, where the family was naturalized. In 1888, Lerski emigrated to the United States, where he worked as an actor. Around 1910, he began to photograph. In 1915, he returned to Europe and worked as a cameraman and expert for special effects for many films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis. At the end of the 1920s, he made a name as an avant-garde portrait photographer.
In 1932, he emigrated with his second wife to Mandate Palestine, where he continued to work as a photographer, cameraman, and film director. On 22 March 1948, they left what was by then Israel and settled again in Zürich.
Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (22 March 1771 – 27 June 1848) was a German, later Swiss, author and reformer. Most of his life was spent, and most of his reputation earned, in Switzerland. He had an extensive civil service career, and wrote histories, fiction and other works which were widely known.