The History of Internef: 5 Small Portraits

Last updated:9 décembre 2025

As the semester comes to a close, and exams approach, some of you may be impatiently waiting for your exam dates. It is always suggested that everyone arrive early for exams, and so most find themselves waiting in front of an Internef room under the watchful eyes of the room’s namesake.

These are, in a sense, some of the smaller remnants of UNIL’s long history. The move of the campus out of the city centre, away from the old town put some distance between it and its rich history.

This article aims to shed a little light on the 5 people whose names you may recognize from rooms where you’ve had courses, or where you might have exams in January. Maybe this article can even serve to ease tensions a bit as you stand below their watchful eyes.

Léon Walras

Léon Walras is mostly encountered by students when they first hear about the Walras law. It’s a bit abstract, but in a sense what it says is that the surplus and excess demand in an economy, no matter how many markets there are, always equal zero, as people are constrained by their budget. Thus one can conclude that if all but one market are in equilibrium, the last market has to be as well.

However, his most influential contribution comes in the same lane as the Walras law, namely his work with General Equilibrium to characterize the economy. The importance of it is that we must look at the effects that happen in one market (or part) of the economy, as it will affect the rest of the economy as well. A strong increase in the price of noodles for example may impact the market of rice as people might choose to substitute rice for noodles. A simple look at only the noodle market, for example to calculate welfare loss, would therefore be incomplete.

Moreover, and probably most important is that he founded the Lausanne school of economics. Together with his successor, and fellow Internef companion Vilfredo Pareto, he was both integral to the arrival of economics at UNIL and contributed to the foundation on which modern economics is built. Although since he taught in Lausanne around the end of the 19^th century, he was very much ahead of his time.

Vilfredo Pareto

Pareto is the guy everyone has heard of, whether from Pareto Efficiency in your introductory microeconomics class or the Pareto Principle (Despite the name, the only thing his work and the Pareto Principle have in common is the numbers 80/20). He succeeded Walras as the Chair of Political Economy in Lausanne. He can still be seen as one of the last polymaths, as he did dabble in a wide variety of fields, amongst which Math, Sociology and Economics were the most important.

What however he continued was a mathematical exploration of Economics. He too worked with the general equilibrium theory. Which today is a fundamental part of economics, especially if you ever take a master’s level course that has some of its roots in Lausanne. With that came the mathematization of Economics. Both of these subjects were pioneered by Walras in Lausanne. Pareto succeeded him at the head of the economics department in 1893 and built on his work.

Pareto also realized that people aren’t always rational and turned to sociology where his economic theory wasn’t able to answer his questions. In that sense, although he did mostly work with a mathematical framework that used simplified and abstract models, he was still very conscious of the messiness that is inherent to the social sciences.

Juste Olivier

Both Walras and Pareto are linked to the Faculties of Economics, which, due to its large presence in Internef is probably overrepresented by design. However, there are figures from other domains. Juste Olivier represents literature. The poet lived in the 19^th century and can point to a vast number of experiences. He travelled extensively throughout Switzerland and Europe and wrote many poems.

Yet what I want to focus on here is his connection to the Canton of Vaud. During the century that saw the rise of nationalism and national identity, he gave the people of Vaud both an identity through “Le Canton de Vaud, sa vie et sa histoire” and a larger-than-life figure to look up to in Major Davel, the freedom-fighter that fought for and ultimately died for Vaud, by writing his biography. He therefore was an integral figure in the construction of the vaudoise Identity.

Furthermore, I would be remiss not to mention Oliviers wife, Caroline Olivier-Ruchet who herself made her mark in Swiss literary history. A writer like her husband, she wrote both alone, under the pseudonym Charles Autigny, and together with her husband.

Pierre Viret

Wherever there is a university, at least in some form or another you will encounter a reformer. At Internef, Pierre Viret occupies this spot. He was instrumental for reformation in Switzerland together with Calvin. He supported reformation in Geneva and their struggle against the duke of Savoy and later left for Lausanne in 1536 where he too participated in the installation of Protestantism.

In 1537, he worked at the Académie de Lausanne that was founded in that same year but in 1538, as Calvin got kicked out of Geneva, he temporarily left for Geneva. During this tumultuous phase for the reformation, many Lausanne teachers went to Geneva with him. As the tensions with Bern – which ruled Lausanne and Vaud at the time – worsened, due to his more radical views he was expelled from Lausanne. This expulsion led to most of the staff of the Académie de Lausanne accompanying him and indirectly contributed to the intellectual milieu that later led to the founding of Adacémie de Genève under Calvin.

In 1537, he taught at the newly founded Académie de Lausanne, but in 1538, after Calvin was expelled from Geneva, Viret temporarily left Lausanne for Geneva to support the Reformation there. It was a turbulent moment for the reform in the Romandie, as tensions with the more moderate Bern, which governed Lausanne and Vaud at the time, grew. Viret’s stricter views eventually got him expelled from Lausanne and most of the Academy’s staff left with him, a movement that helped shape the intellectual environment that later enabled Calvin to establish the Académie de Genève in 1559.

Jean Barbeyrac

The man to round out the group that marks Internef is Jean Barbeyrac. He was most active at UNIL from 1711-1717 and is responsible for bringing ideas around natural law from German into French. He notably translated works from Grotius, and Puffendorfs “De jure naturale et gentium”. However, reducing him to the role of a translator is misleading. His translations were complimented by commentaries and prefaces that critically engaged with the translated ideals.

These ideas, partially because his translations facilitated their spread, influenced the revolutionaries that would shape Europe in the next century. His influence can best be understood in terms of language and language barriers. He thought it to be important to hold his lectures in the native language of the place he lectured at which is why he lectured in French at the Académie de Lausanne. And his translations were important to the spread of ideas that would otherwise have been more restricted to the native language of their authors.

All of these five thinkers have been instrumental i our modern world and were fundamental to both the university of Lausanne, its city and the Canton of Vaud. And with that I wish you good luck for the end of the semester and your exams.

Jonas Bruno