70 years of the SNSF: from a few million to a billion

The SNSF has been awarding grants to research projects across all scientific disciplines since 1952. How has the amount of funding evolved over time?

In the first few years of its existence, the SNSF contributed a few million francs each funding cycle to researchers in Switzerland. After ten years, in 1962, the funding pool amounted to CHF 23 million, which is equivalent to just under CHF 100 million today. Thereafter, the amount of funding increased to CHF 150 million by 1979 (about CHF 300 million today). During the first half of the 1980s, funding stagnated, then rose to around CHF 360 million by 1996 (around CHF 400 million today). After stagnating again up to the early 2000s, funding increased more or less steadily, reaching an all-time high of CHF 1,152 million in 2018.