Emeritus Faculty
Since ETH Zurich introduced its own computer science curriculum in 1981, numerous faculty members have shaped computer science research and passed on their skills to a younger generation. Without their outstanding work and contributions to the department, D-INFK would not be the same today. We thank all of them for their work, their valuable teaching, and their innovative research contributions.
Browse the list below of all our former professors and read about how they formed our department.
Click here for more information about the history of the department.
Peter Arbenz
Faculty member from 1987 to 2018
Peter Arbenz is a computer scientist who was with the Department of Computer Science from 1987 to 2018.
Professor Arbenz was born in 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. After receiving his diploma in mathematics from the University of Zurich in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1983 from the same university, he started working as a software engineer with BBC Brown, Boveri & Cie., in Baden, Switzerland. He started his position as a Senior Research Associate at ETH Zürich’s Institute of Scientific Computing in 1987. In 2003, he was appointed Adjunct Professor at the Chair of Computational Science at the Department of Computer Science at ETH.
Peter Arbenz’s research interests include numerical analysis, numerical linear algebra, large-scale problems, and parallel and distributed computing.
Joachim Buhmann
Faculty member from 2003 to 2024
Joachim Buhmann is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from October 2003 to July 2024.
Besides teaching, the main focus of his work has been on questions related to pattern recognition and data analysis, which include areas such as machine learning, statistical learning theory, and applied statistics.
Joachim Buhmann was born in 1959 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. He received a diploma in physics in 1985 and a PhD in 1988, both from the Technical University of Munich. Afterwards, he spent three years as a research associate and research assistant professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. In 1991 he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. From 1992 until 2003 he was a professor of practical computer science at the University of Bonn. After that, Buhmann joined ETH Zurich at the end of 2003, where he has been teaching and doing research ever since.
Joachim Buhmann also took on important administrative functions at ETH Zurich, including the roles of Vice Rector for Study Programmes (2014-2018) and Head of the Institute for Machine Learning (2014-2023). He has been a member of the Technical Committee of the German Pattern Recognition Society (DAGM) since 1995, and a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation since 2017. Joachim Buhmann also serves on the board of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.
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"AI helps us to grasp more and more complex facts" (D-INFK article 28.05.2024)
Komei Fukuda
Faculty member from 1995 to 2016
Komei Fukuda is a computer scientist and mathematician. He has been with the Institute for Operations Research at ETH Zurich since 1995 and received the title of Professor at the Department of Mathematics in May 1999. Komei Fukuda retired in 2016.
Professor Fukuda was born in 1951 in Tokyo, Japan. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 1974 and his Master’s degree in 1976 from the Department of Administration Engineering at Keio University, Japan. He was awarded a Canadian government scholarship in 1976 to study for his Ph.D. at the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization of the University of Waterloo in Canada. There, he wrote his thesis titled "Oriented Matroid Programming" for which he was conferred a Ph.D. in Mathematics. In 1982, he became Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Sciences of Tokyo Institute of Technology and Associate Professor in 1989 at the Graduate School of Systems Management of University of Tsukuba. The institutions to which he was invited include the University of Paris VI, the RIMS of Kyoto University, the ENS in Paris, the Mathematical Institute of Hungarian Academic of Sciences in Budapest, the McGill University in Montréal, and the EPF Lausanne.
His major interests include convex polytopes, linear optimization and geometric computation in higher dimensions, interactions of geometry and combinatorics, enumeration problems, and complexity theory.
Walter Gander
Faculty member from 1987 to 2009
Walter Gander is a computer scientist who was working at ETH Zurich from 1987 until 2009. His main focus was scientific computing. In 1989, together with the two senior research associates Peter Arbenz and Hans Hinterberger, he founded the Institute of Scientific Computing at D-INFK.
Walter Gander was born in 1944. He grew up in Biel, Switzerland, received his diploma in mathematics from ETH Zurich in 1968 and then started his position as an assistant of Professor Rutishauser in the new founded group for computer science. In 1973, Gander obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics under the supervision of Professor Henrici. From 1973 to 1987, Gander was a professor of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences (Neu-Technikum Buchs). In 1977 and 1984, he was on a sabbatical at the Stanford University, California. Walter Gander became an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich in 1987, and a Full Professor in 1991. From 1989 to 1997, he headed the Institute of Scientific Computing and he was Director of Studies from 1990 to 1992. From 1989 to 1991, he was also Head of the Swiss Supercomputer Initiative for acquiring the national supercomputer in Manno, and from fall 1997 to fall 2001, he was Chairman of the Department D-INFK as well Director of Studies of Computer Science.
As emeritus, Gander became a visiting professor at HKBU in Hong Kong. For 11 years, he would spend the spring semester in Hong Kong and the fall semester in Switzerland, supporting Professor Hromkovic in his efforts to introduce computer science to pupils. Gander wrote several books, among them the very successful one by Gander and Hrebicek "Solving Problems in Scientific Computing using Maple and Matlab", which has been translated in several languages.
Gaston Gonnet
Faculty member from 1989 to 2013
Gaston Gonnet is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from 1989 to 2013. He is best known for his contributions to the Maple computer algebra system and the creation of a digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Professor Gonnet was born in 1948 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Waterloo (UW) in 1977. In 1980, Gonnet co-founded the Symbolic Computation Group at UW. The work of SCG on a general-purpose computer algebra system later formed the core of the Maple system. In 1984, Gonnet co-founded the New Oxford English Dictionary project at UW, which sought to create a searchable electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary. The project was selected by the Oxford University Press as a partner for the computerisation leading to the publication of the second edition of the OED. The UW project's main contributions laid in the parsing of the source text to enhance the tagging and in building a full-text searching system based on PAT trees (a version of suffix array).
This project later culminated in another successful commercial venture, the Open Text Corporation, of which Gonnet was founder and chairman of the Board until 1994. In 1991, he began to develop the Darwin programming language for biosciences, which would become the basis for OMA, a package and database for gene orthology prediction. At ETH Zurich, he was working at the Institute for Computational Sciences.
Professor Gonnet’s research interests encompass bioinformatics, computer algebra, text searching, and machine learning. He is the chief scientist of two Canadian startups: CeeqIT and Porfiau. In 2011, Gonnet received the ACM Richard D. Jenks Memorial Prize for “Excellence in Software Engineering Applied to Computer Algebra” for the Maple Project.
Thomas Gross
Faculty member from 1994 to 2019
Thomas Gross started working at ETH Zurich in 1994 and was appointed Full Professor of Computer Science in 1998. By the end of July 2019, Thomas Gross attained professor emeritus status.
Professor Gross studied at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn and the Technical University Munich, where he graduated with a degree in computer science. He attended Stanford University and obtained a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. At Stanford, he was part of the team that developed the original Stanford MIPS processor and his dissertation (advised by John L. Hennessy) focused on the post-pass optimizer for the innovative RISC processor. After spending another year in sunny California as a postdoc, he joined the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At CMU, he headed the development of the software system for the Warp machine, and later participated in the design of the iWarp, a joint Intel/CMU project. Subsequently, his focus shifted to software systems and he and his colleagues developed several innovative compilers (Fx, cmcc).
His main research interest was software construction, and he developed various tools for analysing and measuring the performance of parallel programmes. He investigated the extent to which software on modern processors can replace complicated hardware. Further, Thomas Gross was a dedicated teacher. In 2016, he was awarded the “Golden Owl” for outstanding teaching. Also, he served as head of the Computer Systems Institute for many years and was appointed by the then rector as Delegate for the Network for Educational Technology.
Jürg Gutknecht
Faculty member from 1985 to 2014
Jürg Gutknecht is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty meber at ETH Zurich from 1985 to 2014. As Head of the Department of Computer Science he pioneered the US-type credit system at ETH in 1995.
Professor Gutknecht was born in 1949 in Bülach, Switzerland. From 1967 to 1970, he was a member of the Real-time System Programming Group at Swissair. From 1970 to 1974, he studied mathematics at ETH Zurich and simultaneously worked at IBM as a student employee. In 1978, he received his doctorate with a dissertation on differentiable function spaces. After three years as Professor of Mathematics at the Kantonsschule Heerbrugg, he joined Niklaus Wirth's Lilith/ Modula research team in 1981. In 1985, after a sabbatical stay at the Xerox-PARC Research Laboratory in California, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. Then, together with Niklaus Wirth, he developed the Oberon programming language and system.
Jürg Gutknecht's research focus lies in the area of programming languages, compilers, and runtime platforms, with an emphasis on object models and component technology. His latest creations are the "Zonnon" language evolution and the "Bluebottle" runtime. His final research was in the area of active objects in programming languages. Jürg was president of the Swiss Informatics Society SI from 2014 to 2018.
Hans Hinterberger
Faculty member from 1987 to 2010
Hans Hinterberger is a Swiss computer scientist who focuses on multidimensional data structures, scientific data management, and methods of multivariate data visualisation. He has been working at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich from 1980 to 2010.
Professor Hinterberger was born in 1945 in Herisau, Switzerland. After training as a mechanical draftsman, he emigrated to Canada in 1967, where he switched to the area of computer science. He received his Bachelor's degree from Concordia University in Montréal. After his return to Switzerland in 1980, he completed his studies at ETH Zurich in 1987 with a doctoral thesis in the field of multidimensional dynamic data structures. He then led a research group at the Department of Computer Science dealing with the management and visualisation of scientific data and became Adjunct Professor in 1999. Moreover, he has supervised various computer science courses for students in the natural sciences at ETH.
Hinterberger is interested in computer-assisted teaching and learning methods enabling better use of computer science to benefit students. He has led several projects on computer-assisted tutoring and assessment. In research, he is concerned with multidimensional data structures, scientific data management, and methods of multivariate data visualisation. Hans Hinterberger has been emeritus since November 2010.
Juraj Hromkovic
Faculty member from 2004 to 2024
Juraj Hromkovic is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from January 2004 to January 2024.
Next to active research in various fields of theoretical computer science, the main focus of his work and his publications has always been on education for teachers of Computer Science and the illustration of the basics of computer science to non-professionals.
Born in Bratislava in 1958, Juraj Hromkovic studied computer science at Comenius University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1986 and his habilitation in 1989. From 1990 to 1994, he was a visiting professor at the University of Paderborn, and in 1994, he received a professorship at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Kiel. From 1997 to 2003, he led the Chair of Computer Science 1 at RWTH Aachen. Since 2004, he has been a professor at ETH Zurich for Information Technology and Education.
Juraj Hromkovic’s research and teaching interests focus on informatics education, algorithmics for hard problems, complexity theory with special emphasis on the relationship between determinism, randomness, and non-determinism. One of his main activities is writing textbooks that make complex recent discoveries and methods accessible for students and practitioners, and so contributing to the speed up of the transformation of new paradigmatic research results into educational folklore. To introduce the subject of informatics to school education, Hromkovic founded the Centre for Computer Science Education (ABZ) in 2005. Throughout his whole life, Juraj Hromkovic was always very devoted to the education of computer science teachers.
In 2001, Juraj Hromkovic was elected member of the Slovak Academic Society. Since 2010, he is also a member of the Academia Europaea. In 2015, he was honored by the Slovak state award Goodwill Envoy and in 2017, he received the Pribina Cross of the first order from the President of the Slovak Republic.
Cary D. Kornfeld
Faculty member from 2004 to 2008
Cary D. Kornfeld was a researcher, teacher, and inventor in the field of computer science. Kornfeld joined ETH in early 2004 to head a small research group on stereoscopic imaging and became Full Adjunct Professor in 2008 but went on medical leave shortly thereafter. He passed away on May 15, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 69 years.
In 1969, Cary D. Kornfeld graduated with a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from UCLA. His studies were funded by an NSF Undergraduate Research Fellowship. He then found his way north to Silicon Valley where he worked on several software projects. He later returned to academia and joined the Computer Systems Laboratory at Stanford University. When Xerox PARC allowed graduate students to use their VLSI facilities, he moved there and built a hardware prototype of a flat panel display that was an early version of ePaper. In 1985, he graduated with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford (advised by Michael Flynn). For the next 15 years, he worked at several research laboratories (AT&T Bell Laboratories, NEC Research Institute, Interval Research) and was quite productive. He built an optically programmed neuro-computer, a low-cost autostereoscopic television system, and the Responsive Workbench, a large stereoscopic bench intended to integrate virtual objects into real-world settings. A common theme in his work was to use software (and programmable processors) to replace expensive (physical) hardware (e.g., expensive fixtures to calibrate stereoscopic cameras). At the Stanford Medical School, he built a digital stereoscopic video educational facility for teaching anatomy and surgery that won the first prize at the Hackers Conference.
At Princeton University, Professor Kornfeld taught computer architecture and operating systems. At ETH Zurich, he developed a class on stereoscopic imaging that was offered for several years and was extremely popular with the students. Cary Kornfeld had realized early on that programs could cheaply solve many problems that used to require expensive hardware solutions (hardware as found in a hardware store, i.e., rods, tripods, optical benches, not processors and PCs, of which he used many). But Cary Kornfeld did not just teach software design and engineering, his class also covered visual perception, human biology and chemistry. To obtain credit, students programmed cameras and display systems and each team produced a stereoscopic movie. Several of the movies were shown at various film festivals in Switzerland and abroad.
Peter Läuchli
Faculty member from 1983 to 1993
Peter Läuchli was a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich from 1983 to 1993. He was one of the founding fathers of the Department of Computer Science and a leading force in the construction of ERMETH, the first electronic computer that was built in Switzerland in 1954. Professor emeritus Peter Läuchli passed away on May 12 2021 at the age of 92.
Peter Läuchli was born on June 4, 1928 in Zurich and grew up in Winterthur. He studied theoretical physics at the ETH Zurich and was an assistant and research associate at the Institute of Applied Mathematics from 1954 to 1964, obtaining his doctorate in 1959 and his habilitation in 1961. In the autumn of 1964, the Swiss Federal Council elected him Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics, and in the summer of 1968 Associate Professor of Computer Science. On October 1, 1983, he was elected by the Federal Council as Full Professor of Computer Science. After a successful career dedicated to ETH Zurich and its members, he retired in October 1993.
Peter Läuchli entered the field of scientific computing very early and was one of the founders of the "Fachgruppe für Computerwissenschaften". He participated in the establishment of the Institute, and later the Department of Computer Science. He was not only involved in the development of the new field at ETH Zurich, but also served several times as head of the division IIIC as well as the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science. As a lecturer, he influenced generations of future engineers and scientists, among others in his lecture "Application of Computing Systems". He was highly appreciated at the department as a calm, helpful and reliable colleague.
Friedemann Mattern
Faculty member from 1999 to 2020
Friedemann Mattern is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from 1999 to 2020. At the Department of Computer Science, he led the Distributed Systems Group and established in 1999 ubiquitous computing as a research field at ETH Zurich. He served as Chairman of the Department of Computer Science from 2010 to 2013.
Professor Mattern was born on July 28, 1955, in Freiburg, Germany. He studied computer science at the University of Bonn and became a Faculty Research Assistant at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Kaiserslautern in 1983. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1989 with a thesis on distributed algorithms. From 1991-1994, he was Professor of Computer Science at Saarland University (Saarbrücken), and from 1994-1999 at the Technical University (TU) of Darmstadt. There, he founded the graduate program "Enabling Technologies for Electronic Commerce".
His research interests include models and concepts for distributed computations, ubiquitous computing, programming of parallel and distributed systems, and infrastructures for the "Internet of Things". At the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, Friedemann Mattern taught courses on distributed systems and algorithms, networking, ubiquitous computing, and smart energy. He also taught Informatik II, a lecture that has been part of the "Critical Thinking ETH" initiative, which promotes interdisciplinary exchange, critical thinking, and responsible action.
Friedemann Mattern is a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals and has published over 180 research articles. He is also a member of several scientific academies such as the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) and of acatech, the German Academy of Science and Engineering.
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“I wasn’t trying to save the world” (D-INFK news, 21.06.2021)
Jiří Matoušek
Faculty member from 2012 to 2015
Jiří Matoušek was a brilliant and outstanding mathematician and computer scientist. He was a Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich from 2012 until his death, in 2015.
Matoušek studied at Charles University in Prague, where he also took his doctorate and became first an Assistant Professor and then, from 2000, Professor of Computer Science. From 1996 onwards, he spent three or four months of every year at ETH Zurich as a visiting professor in the Department of Computer Science, carrying out research and also becoming increasingly involved in education. Loyalty to his home university in Prague meant that, for a long time, he was reluctant to take up an offer of regular employment at ETH Zurich. Finally, however, he was persuaded to accept a professorship in computer science with reduced hours at ETH Zurich, a job which he performed with great commitment, pleasure, and passion from 2012 until his death.
Although his research focused on combinatorics, discrete geometry, and algorithmics, his interests ranged well beyond these areas. He was a recognised expert in fields including algorithmic geometry, topological methods, discrepancy theory, and linear programming. Time and again, he ventured boldly into new territory, linked different disciplines together and was soon able to share his findings in lectures and in books that were of major significance and widely read internationally. Being involved in this work was a huge privilege for his students and colleagues here at ETH Zurich.
Anyone who knew him could sense the depth in his approach, and not only in his scientific work. He was supremely capable of concentrating on the essentials while at the same time always remaining open to other people’s questions. He set high standards for himself but was tolerant and warm-hearted towards others, while his dry sense of humour was inimitable and unforgettable. Jiří Matoušek died on 9 March 2015, a day before his 52nd birthday. The members of ETH Zurich, his former students, and colleagues will all retain fond memories of him.
Bertrand Meyer
Faculty member from 2001 to 2016
Bertrand Meyer was a Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich from 2001 until 2016 and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science from 2004 to 2006. In 1985, he founded Eiffel Software, a technology company which he headed until 2001 and of which he remains Chief Architect.
Professor Meyer was born in France in 1950. He received his Master's degree in engineering from the École Polytechnique in Paris, a second Master's degree from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from the Université de Nancy, France. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France, and for three years he was a member of the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2001, he started his position at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.
His work covers diverse aspects of software engineering with a special focus on methods, techniques, languages, and tools for improving software quality. Many of the results are embodied in Eiffel, a general software development and programming language for building high-quality systems, used by companies in the financial industry, aerospace, defense, health care, and other areas for mission-critical application areas. He introduced widely used software engineering ideas such as "Design by Contract" for building reliable systems and "trusted components". His work and that of his group revolve around techniques for transforming the process of software production and bringing a new level of guaranteed quality to software products. This involves object technology, component models, techniques for developing trusted components, automated testing techniques (the AutoTest framework), automated techniques for correcting program bugs (the AutoFix framework), automated proofs and applications of formal methods, concurrency and distribution, through the SCOOP model of concurrent object-oriented computation, and techniques for object persistence. He is also interested in topics bordering on politics and economics, such as software patents and the phenomenon of offshore software development. Further, he has devoted particular attention to techniques of teaching programming, especially at the introductory level.
In 2006, Meyer received the Software System Award of the ACM for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel. He is a 2008 Fellow of the ACM as well as a recipient of the 2009 Harlan Mills Award of the IEEE Computer Society.
Jürg Nievergelt
Faculty member from 1975 to 2003
Jürg Nievergelt was a Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich from 1975 to 2003. He was an instrumental force in the establishment of the field of computer science and the launch of ETH's own computer science curriculum in 1981.
Jürg Nievergelt began his academic career in mathematics. He graduated from ETH Zurich in 1962 with a thesis on game theory. After a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Illinois, he was appointed Professor of Computer Science, first as Assistant Professor and later as Full Professor. From 1985 to 1989, on leave from ETH Zurich, he headed the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jürg Nievergelt's interests were wide-ranging, from algorithms and data structures to numerics, parallel computing, and the first approaches to interface design – he left his mark everywhere. At the University of Illinois, he developed "Plato", one of the first computer-aided teaching systems for mass use, and at ETH Zurich he gave the first inaugural lecture with a computer demo. Many algorithms and data structures proposed by him have found their way into textbooks and are still familiar to every computer scientist today. He has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards for his achievements.
Despite all his scientific success, Jürg Nievergelt has always been particularly committed to people: to students, colleagues, and society. For almost thirty years, he has decisively shaped computer science at ETH Zurich by assuming numerous functions. He launched the didactics of computer science as a hobby and as a sideline. He has taught countless students and doctoral candidates not only computer science but also what it means to be human.
Moira Norrie
Faculty member from 1996 to 2018
Moira Norrie was appointed Associate Professor in 1996 and became a Full Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Information Systems at ETH Zurich in 2002. She received professor emeritus status in 2018.
Professor Norrie studied mathematics and computer science in her home country of Scotland. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Dundee, her Master’s degree from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and her Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow. Her previous posts include lectureships at the Universities of Edinburgh, Hertfordshire, and Abertay and research positions at the Swedish Institute for Systems Development (SISU) in Stockholm and the University of Glasgow. In February 1996, Norrie was appointed Associate Professor of Computer Science and in 2002, she became a Full Professor.
The main interests of her research group include object-oriented data models and systems, internet databases, and the use of these technologies in advanced application systems. Specifically, the group produced the OMS Database Development Suite supporting the design and development of database application systems. OMS is based on a generic object-oriented data model and includes a rapid prototyping system, a Java-based application development framework, web interfaces, and graphical browsers for data and metadata.
Ronald Peikert
Faculty member from 2008 to 2015
Ronald Peikert was an Adjunct Professor at the Chair of Computational Science at ETH Zurich. His research was focused on scientific visualisation. He received emeritus status in 2015.
Professor Peikert was born in 1955 in Zurich, Switzerland. He received his diploma in mathematics in 1979 and his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1985, both from ETH Zurich. He spent the year 1986 as a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Back at ETH, he worked for two years as a senior assistant at the Mathematical Seminar, for six years as the head of the Graphics Group of the Interdisciplinary Project Center for Supercomputing, and for three years as the head of the scientific visualisation group of the Swiss Center of Scientific Computing. In 1999 he started his position as a senior researcher at the Department of Computer Science.
Ronald Peikert was a member of the steering committee of the EuroVis symposium. His research interests include flow visualisation, feature extraction techniques, and industrial applications of visualisation.
Hans-Jörg Schek
Faculty member from 1988 to 2005
Hans-Jörg Schek is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from 1988 to 2005, where he headed the Institute of Information Systems. He retired end of March 2005.
Professor Schek was born in 1940 in Hanover, Germany. He studied mathematics at the University of Stuttgart and earned his Ph.D. in civil engineering in 1972, also from the University of Stuttgart. During this time he developed – together with his dissertation advisor, Professor Linkwitz – a new method for the computation of prestressed cable-net roofs and applied this method to the analysis of roofs at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 1972, he joined the IBM Scientific Centre in Heidelberg as a research member and became a project manager in 1978. There, he investigated end-user-oriented interfaces and transferred them increasingly into database system research with special emphasis on integration with information retrieval systems. During this period he also completed his habilitation on computer methods for network computation and was given venia legendi for Mathematical Methods in Cicil Engineering and Geodesy from the University of Stuttgart in 1978. From 1983 to 1988, he was a Full Professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt. The DASDBS database project that he established there is known for its contributions to data modeling (NF2 model), to multi-level transactions, and to extensible spatial databases. He became a Full Professor at ETH Zurich in 1988, where he has directed the database research group which at the beginning consisted of the Darmstadt team joining him with the move to Zürich.
His research interests included data models, interoperability of databases and cooperation with application systems, generic, extensible object managers, and transaction management. At ETH together with his team, he continued working in the directions above and later moved more genererally into the the administration of information spaces with special emphasis on digital libraries, multimedia databases and coordination of services.
Professor Schek was a founder and editor-in-chief of the VLDB Journal. His awards include ACM Fellow (2001) and the ACM Sigmod Contribution Award (2007).
Emo Welzl
Faculty member from 1996 to 2024
Emo Welzl is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member of ETH Zurich from April 1996 to January 2024.
His research interests are in foundations of computer science, mainly combinatorial algorithms, in particular computational geometry and applications, combinatorial models for optimisation, analysis of geometric structures, randomised methods, and discrete geometry.
Emo Welzl was born in 1958 in Linz, Austria. He studied at the Graz University of Technology receiving a Diploma in Applied Mathematics in 1981 and a doctorate in 1983 under the supervision of Hermann Maurer. Following postdoctoral studies at Leiden University, he eventually became a professor at the Free University of Berlin in 1987 at age 28 and was at that point the youngest professor in Germany. Since 1996 he has been Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.
Throughout his career, Welzl received numerous prizes and honours, for example the Max Planck-Prize (1992) and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Prize (1995), just to name a few. In 2023, he was honoured with the ETH Golden Owl, which is given to lecturers who have provided exceptional teaching. Emo Welzl is also a member of various prestigious scientific societies, such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Academia Europaea, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of multiple journal editorial boards and has been program chair for the Symposium on Computational Geometry in 1995, one of the tracks of the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming in 2000, and one of the tracks of the European Symposium on Algorithms in 2007.
Peter Widmayer
Faculty member from 1992 to 2019
Since 1992 Peter Widmayer has been a Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich as well as the Chair of Algorithms, Data Structures, and Applications. In February 2019 he received professor emeritus status.
Professor Widmayer, who was born in 1953, is from Ehningen, Germany. He studied at the Technical University in Karlsruhe, where he received his doctorate with a dissertation on algorithms and complexity in computer graphics and VLSI design. Afterwards, he spent a year at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights NY. He completed his habilitation at the University of Karlsruhe with his work on Approximation algorithms for Steiner's problem in graphs. As Professor of Computer Science, he taught at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and has been lecturing in theoretical computer science at the ETH Zurich since 1992.
His research interests lie in the area of data structures and algorithms. He was teaching at the Department of Computer Science at ETH for 27 years and made valuable contributions to computer science research.
Niklaus Wirth
Faculty member from 1968 to 1999
Niklaus Wirth was a Swiss computer scientist and Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich from 1968 until 1999. He has designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he received the ACM Turing Award, generally recognised as the highest distinction in computer science, and in 1987 the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE. Niklaus Wirth died on 1 January 2024, just weeks before his 90th birthday.
Professor Wirth took his degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich in 1959. Afterwards, he studied at Laval University, Canada. In 1963 he received his doctorate under Professor Harry Huskey at the University of California in Berkeley with a scholarship from the Ford Foundation. From 1963 to 1967 he taught as an Assistant Professor at Stanford University and later at the University of Zurich. In 1968 he was appointed Full Professor of Computer Science at the ETH Zurich. His chief interests were in software engineering and its tools, in particular programming languages. In 1970 he devised the language Pascal, in 1980 Modula-2, and in 1988 Oberon. He designed the Lilith computer and in 1986 the Ceres computer. Subsequently, he became involved in the construction of tools for circuit design with programmable components.
Professor Wirth was a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Computer Society (IEEE), the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences (SATW), the US National Academy of Engineering, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy and the Orden pour le mérite. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of York, Linz, Laval, Novosibirsk and Pretoria, the Open University as well as the EPF Lausanne.
More information
Download Read obituary (PDF, 132 KB)
Read ETH farewell article
Read READ.ME Special edition: In memoriam of Prof. em. Niklaus E. Wirth
Read faculty tributes of Niklaus Wirth
Read memories of Niklaus Wirth
Carl August Zehnder
Faculty member from 1970 to 2003
Carl August Zehnder is a Professor of Computer Science and was a faculty member at ETH Zurich from 1979 until 2003. His main focus concerned data and databases, including large information systems, information management, project management in IT, IT education, and IT law.
Professor Zehnder was born in 1937 in Baden, Switzerland, and entered ETH Zurich in 1957 to study mathematics. Already in 1958, he followed a programming course for the ETH-built early computer ERMETH. In 1962, he graduated in mathematics, and in 1965 he earned his doctoral degree (Dr. sc. math.), both at ETH Zurich. His doctoral thesis concerned the computer-based desgn of timetables and transportation schedules. Thereafter, he did industry consulting, and from 1966 to 1967 he worked as a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967, he returned to ETH Zurich, initially as deputy head of the newly-founded Institute of Operations Research, then in the rapidly expanding field of information technology as head of the coordination group for data processing, which he led from 1969 to 1973. He became Assistant Professor in 1970, followed by Associate Professor in 1973, and finally Full Professor of computer science in 1979, where he introduced databases as a new field of research and teaching.
In parallel with his teaching and research activities, Professor Zehnder was engaged in additional responsibilities for ETH Zurich including Rector's delegate for study organization, founding head of the new Division of Computer Science IIIC, ETH Vice-president, and head of the Department of Computer Science. As a militia General Staff officer with totally 4 years of service he has also been engaged in introducing IT to the Swiss army, and he served in the board of several professional organisations for IT/ computer science.