X-Nico

5 unusual facts about University of Basel


Blade Guitars

Levinson had been repairing guitars since 1964 and, in 1977, during his graduate studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland, he founded Guitars by Levinson.

Hox gene

In 1983, the homeobox was discovered independently by researchers in two labs: Ernst Hafen, Michael Levine, and William McGinnis (in Walter Gehring's lab at the University of Basel, Switzerland) and Matthew P. Scott and Amy Weiner (in Thomas Kaufman's lab at Indiana University in Bloomington).

KV32

KV32 has not yet been fully cleared or excavated, but work is underway by a team from the University of Basel's MISR Project.

Martin Cellarius

In 1541 his friend Simon Grynaeus arranged for Borrhaus a position teaching philosophy at the University of Basel, and then in 1544 he became professor of Old Testament and 1546, 1553 and 1564 served as rector.

Ostrowski Prize

Alexander Ostrowski, a longtime professor at the University of Basel, left his estate to the foundation in order to establish a prize for outstanding achievements in pure mathematics and the foundations of numerical mathematics.


Adolf Portmann

Born in Basel, Switzerland, he studied zoology at the University of Basel and worked later in Geneva, Munich, Paris and Berlin, but mainly in marine biology laboratories in France (Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roscoff, Villefranche-sur-Mer) and Helgoland.

Alfred Rittmann

University of Basel (1934-41)
Centro geominerario, Instituto della Recostruzione Industriale, Napoli (1941-44)
Centro Geologico Silano, Conzilio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Napoli (1944-48)
University of Alexandria (1949-53)
University of Cairo (1953-57)
Volcanology Institute, University of Catania (1958-63)
Istituto Internazionale di Vulcanologia, Catania (1960-68)

BD +17° 3248

The University of Mainz and University of Basel groups of Karl-Ludwig Kratz and Friedrich-Karl Thielemann performed a comparison between the observed abundances for the stable element europium (Z=63) and the radioactive elements thorium (Z=90) and uranium (Z=92) to the calculated abundances of an r-process in a Type II supernova explosion.

Frieder Nake

He has been a visiting professor to Universitetet Oslo, Aarhus Universitet, Universität Wien, Danube University Krems, University of Colorado, University of Lübeck, University of Basel, University of Costa Rica, Xi'an University of Science and Technology and Tongji University.

Karl-Ludwig Kratz

Elemental abundances from Supernova explosions are calculated in close collaboration with Friedrich-Karl Thielemann of the University of Basel.

Robert Baldauf

Robert Baldauf was a Swiss philologist and a Privatdozent at the University of Basel during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sneden's Star

Comparing the observed abundances for a stable element such as Europium (Z=63) and the radioactive element Thorium (Z=90) to calculated abundances of an r-process in a type II supernova explosion (as from the universities at Mainz and Basel groups of Karl-Ludwig Kratz and Friedrich-Karl Thielemann) allowed observers to determine the age of this star to about 13 billion years.

Walter Jakob Gehring

Walter Jakob Gehring (born 20 March 1939 in Zurich) is Professor at the Biozentrum Basel of the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Wilma Olson

During her time at Rutgers, she was a visiting professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland (1979–1980) and at the Polymer Chemistry Department of the Jilin University in Changchun, China (1981).


see also

Homeotic selector gene

The independent discoveries of the homeobox in the 1983 by Walter Gehring's laboratory at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and Thomas Kaufman's laboratory at Indiana University confirmed Lewis's theory.

Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres

DesBarres read mathematics and art at the University of Basel, studying under John and Daniel Bernoulli.