Today it is an imprint used by two companies in unrelated fields: Additionally, the Reinach-based printer Birkhäuser+GBC[7] operates independently of the above, being now owned by Basler Zeitung.

In the 1920s the sons of Emil Birkhäuser established a basis for the current scientific program with academic journals and reference books, later progressing to textbooks and monographs in the natural sciences.

Publications in civil engineering followed as did further journals and book series in the ensuing years.

In the 1960s the publishing program was expanded to incorporate architecture and art of famous painters, lithographs and gravures.

Birkhäuser opened a branch office in Boston, Massachusetts, USA in 1979 which focused on mathematics and theoretical physics.