“Nature never jests.”

– Albrecht von Haller

During my walking tour around Bern, Switzerland, I ran into a statue in front of the University of Bern. It was a statue of Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist, encyclopedist, bibliographer and poet, Albrecht von Haller. All throughout my trip on Bern, I have witnessed how Bern is paying tribute to the German theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. He became a lecturer at the University of Bern and it is there where he developed the “Theory of Relativity”. So I was wondering why it was not Einstein who has a statue there.

The answer is that Haller was born in Bern and the city should be very proud of all his accomplishments as he’s called as “the father of modern physiology”. He even became a civil servant in Bern and was one of the central figures of the economic-patriotic reform movement in the federal capital. The over life-size bronze statue of Haller on a marble pedestal was erected in 1908 in commemoration of his 200th birthday. Haller is standing with a cane and the hat in his hands, wearing a typical 18th century dress.