ETH Zurich

• 1. Introduction

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  ETH Zurich opened its doors on the 16th of October 1855, not as a finished institution, but as a fledgling polytechnic holding its first lectures at various sites scattered across Zurich. It was a place that nearly didn't exist. Conservatives in Switzerland had fought against its creation, fearing that a federal university would tip political power toward liberals. The liberals won, and the Swiss Confederation founded the school on the 7th of February 1854. What began as a disputed political compromise would go on to count 22 Nobel laureates among its alumni and faculty, including Albert Einstein. How did a polytechnic school born out of constitutional argument become one of the most respected research universities in the world? That is what this documentary sets out to understand.

• 2. A Disputed Birth

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  Switzerland in the 1850s was a young federal state, and the question of who controlled education sat at the heart of a deeper argument about national identity. When the Swiss Confederation decided to establish a federal technical institute, conservatives pushed back hard. They wanted universities to stay under cantonal control, not federal authority, and saw the proposed institution as a vehicle for liberal political expansion. The liberals carried the vote, but the compromise showed in the early arrangements: ETH began sharing buildings with the already-established University of Zurich. The original six faculties covered architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, forestry, and a broad integrated department that combined mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and social and political sciences under one roof. Locals quickly gave the institution an informal name drawn from its original title, eidgenössische polytechnische Schule: they called it simply Polytechnikum, or Poly, and the nickname persists in Zurich to this day. The right to award doctoral degrees did not come until a reorganization under the presidency of Jérôme Franel, which ran from 1905 to 1908. The first doctorates followed in 1909, and in 1911 the institution received the name it carries today: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule.

• 3. Stone, Steel, and Gottfried Semper

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  Gottfried Semper arrived at ETH Zurich not only as an architect but as one of the most consequential architectural theorists of his era. Between 1858 and 1864, under the administrative oversight of Gustav Zeuner, Semper designed and oversaw construction of the university's main building. His approach drew on the work of Andrea Palladio and Donato Bramante, expressing itself through bold, clear massing, a rusticated ground level, and a giant order of columns above. The style was distinctly his own, a neoclassical language he had developed over a career that would also give Dresden the Semperoper, the opera house that bears his name. The south wing of the new building was initially shared with the University of Zurich while that institution awaited its own premises, which were not completed until 1912-1914. At roughly the same time, Semper's ETH building was enlarged and its distinctive cupola was added. The structure now stands in the heart of a city that has grown entirely around it, directly across from the University Hospital of Zurich. A building designed for the outskirts became, through the simple passage of time, the center of things.

• 4. Two Campuses, One City

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  By the mid-twentieth century, Zurich had grown so thoroughly around the Zentrum campus that expansion had become nearly impossible. Vineyards and city quarters had swallowed the space that might have allowed new laboratories and lecture halls. ETH's response was to build an entirely new campus on the Hönggerberg, a hill on the northern outskirts of the city, constructed between 1964 and 1976. The last major expansion of Hönggerberg wrapped up in 2003, and in 2005, on the occasion of the university's 150th anniversary, ETH launched a long-term project called Science City, aimed at transforming the hill campus into a district built around principles of sustainability. A third location opened in Basel in 2007, housing the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering on Campus Schällemätteli, close to the University of Basel, the University Hospital, and major players in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. A train ride of 55 minutes connects that Basel site to Zurich. The Hönggerberg campus also hosts the ETH Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, which specializes in accelerator mass spectrometry and applies ion beam techniques to fields ranging from archaeology to fundamental physics.

• 5. The Crucible of Nobel Prizes

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  Albert Einstein is perhaps the name most people associate with ETH Zurich, but he is one among 22 Nobel laureates connected to the institution. The most recent is Didier Queloz, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019. Beyond the Nobel, ETH counts two Fields Medalists, three Pritzker Prize winners, and one Turing Award recipient among those who have studied or worked within its walls. The university's strongest historic reputations cluster in chemistry, mathematics, physics, and computer science. In the QS World University Rankings for 2026, ETH placed 7th worldwide and first in Switzerland. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2026 placed it 11th globally. In the 2024 QS subject rankings, ETH reached the top position worldwide in earth and marine sciences, geology, and geophysics. The annual Wolfgang Pauli Lectures, held since 1962 in honor of former ETH professor Wolfgang Pauli, have drawn 24 Nobel laureates to the podium across the decades. John von Neumann is another name on the list of notable alumni, a reminder that the institution's reach extends across mathematics and computing as well as the physical sciences.

• 6. Learning Under Pressure

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  Undergraduate life at ETH Zurich carries a particular weight from the first year. Students encounter the Basisprüfungen, intensive examination blocks covering foundational subjects in mathematics, physics, and engineering. The stakes are concrete: students have only two attempts to pass, and in mathematics-intensive programs, failure rates commonly run between 50% and 60%. The system functions simultaneously as a filter and as preparation for the research-oriented work that follows. Doctoral education takes a different form entirely. PhD candidates at ETH are hired as paid employees, working directly in professors' laboratories and contributing to teaching while pursuing independent research. Many departments organize doctoral training through thematic graduate schools that promote collaboration with multiple advisers and with partner institutions, most notably the University of Zurich. The subsidized tuition for this experience is set at CHF 730 per semester for all students regardless of nationality, a rate made possible by Swiss federal tax funding. From the autumn semester of 2025, fees for students from outside Switzerland are set to triple to CHF 2,190 per semester. Alongside tuition, both merit-based and need-based scholarships are available.

• 7. Beyond the Classroom

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  More than 100 student associations operate at ETH Zurich, with the VSETH, the umbrella organization for field-specific student groups, at the center. The VSETH runs committees ranging from the Student Sustainability Committee to the ETH Model United Nations and organizes the Polymesse, described as the largest career fair on campus. ETH Juniors functions as a student-led consulting group bridging industry and the university. For engineering competitions, students have built teams around space technology, motorsport, and hyperloop development: the Swiss Academic Spaceflight Initiative flies a sounding rocket annually at the Spaceport America Cup, the AMZ team competes in Formula Student, and Swissloop works on hyperloop systems. In 2017, the ETH board approved the creation of Student Project Houses, makerspaces offering wood- and metalworking, electronics fabrication, and 3D printing at just above material cost. The spaces are managed and staffed entirely by students. And once a year, the entire main building transforms for the Polyball, described as the largest decorated ball in Europe, an event organized by the KOSTA foundation that has been running since the 1880s. The annual rowing match between ETH and the University of Zurich on the river Limmat, a tradition that dates to 1951, continues as a marker of what is called the Uni-Poly rivalry.

• 8. Research Reach and Spin-offs

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  As of 2022, ETH Zurich had generated 527 spin-off companies through its push to link academic research with entrepreneurial application. The Swiss National Supercomputing Center, an autonomous unit of ETH Zurich, operates a national facility in Lugano-Cornaredo. In 2024 that center deployed the Alps Supercomputer, built from over 10,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, placing it among the largest academic supercomputers in the world. The ETH AI Center serves as the university's hub for artificial intelligence research and is an active member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, hosting the ELLIS unit in Zurich and offering ELLIS PhD fellowships. Through the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, it jointly funds research and co-supervises doctoral students with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Beyond individual research hubs, ETH belongs to a wider network: it is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities, and a member of CESAER, the League of European Research Universities, and the ENHANCE Alliance. The ETH Alumni Association, which has existed since 1889 and carries around 35,000 members, took over sponsorship of the Award for Best Teaching following the collapse of Credit Suisse in 2025.