Ludwig Oechslin

 

This engineer was born at Gabicce Mare in the Italian Marches on February 10, 1952. An academic, in 1976 he obtained a degree in Archeology, Ancient History and Greek from the University of Basel. Already working, in 1983 he was also awarded a PhD in Philosophy, History of Research and Erudition (theoretical physics) and Astronomy, this time from the University of Bern, and in 1995 a habilitation in pre-industrial technical archeology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ). In parallel to his many studies, he undertook a watchmaking apprenticeship and became a repairer in 1984 and then a master watchmaker in 1993.
Having acquired all these skills, and like the humanists of the early Renaissance, he managed to combine all these disciplines into creating watch movements which included original astronomical complications or incorporating inno-vative modes of operation. From 1983 to 1990, he developed for Ulysse Nardin, first, the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei watch and then two other pieces to form a Trilogy that has remained in the annals of the profession as the benchmark in terms of astronomical complications.
Passionate about mechanical efficiency, this author, the winner of the Prix Gaïa in history in 1995 for his studies on monumental astronomical clocks, created the Freak watch in 2001 incorporating silicon into the mechanism for the first time. A lover of knowledge, he was curator of the International Museum of La Chaux-du-Fonds from 2001 to 2014. Simultaneously, this adventurous spirit, eager to breathe life into the watchmaking principles which run through him, in 2006 created his own watchmaking brand called Ochs und Junior. Today, still bubbling with ideas, this omniscient en-gineer, both a researcher and a developer-designer, remains open to the elusive watchmaker whose vibrancy, he con-tributes, here and there, to preserving.