Vaud: People
Interesting people from Vaud
François-Louis Cailler
François-Louis Cailler was born in Vevey on 11 June 1796 and died on 6 April 1852. He was one of the pioneers of Swiss chocolate and the founder of the Cailler chocolate factory. Cailler served an apprenticeship with a Vevey grocer. Then he stayed in northern Italy, where he first met the Ticinese chocolate makers of Turin at a fair, and found out about chocolate manufacture. He spent four years working in the Caffarel chocolate factory in Turin. Back in Vevey in 1818, he built machinery for what was to become Switzerland's first modern chocolate factory in 1819: Chocolat Cailler. He housed it in an old mill at En Copet, a site in the municipality of Corsier. Cailler was the first to offer chocolate in the form of bars.
Henri Guisan
Henri Guisan, born in Mézières on 21 October 1874, died on 7 April 1960. He was the general in charge of the Swiss Army during the Second World War. On 30 August 1939 the Swiss Parliament appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the Swiss Army, a position of responsibility which he held throughout the Second World War. In 1960, shortly before his death, several newspapers paid him homage. «La Suisse» wrote, "he was the embodiment of the Swiss citizen and, above all, of the citizen-soldier. He was the man of the moment and took control of the situation in a troubled period of our history, in which so many conflicting forces were at work inside our country".
Thabo Patrick Sefolosha
Thabo Patrick Sefolosha, born in Vevey on 2 May 1984, is a Swiss basketball player. His father was South African and his mother Swiss. He is a member of the Swiss national team and, on 28 June 2006, he became the first Swiss basketball player to be taken with the prestigious American NBA draft.
Hélène Monastier
Hélène Monastier, who was born in Payerne on 2 December 1882, and died on 7 March 1976, was a Swiss teacher. She was a key figure in the Christian Socialists, in International Voluntary Service and in the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers) in French-speaking Switzerland. During the First World War, she became a friend of Leonard Ragaz and his wife, Clara, and tried to make Ragaz's religious movement known in French-speaking Switzerland. In 1917 she met Pierre Ceresole and committed herself enthusiastically to pacifism. She co-operated in the formation of Voluntary Civilian Service, which became Service Civil International/International Voluntary Service (SCI/IVS). She was "the most active, hard-working and dedicated of the women members" of IVS and also served as the movement's international president during the 1940s.
