He has used his private wealth to donate to a number of causes including sponsoring the annual Rössler Prize at his old alma mater.

He then studied mathematics at ETH Zurich, where he co-authored a dissertation on railway computations in the field of space mechanics in 1966 with Eduard Stiefel.

[1] He then spent time at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a NASA research project to calculate space travel.

He is the main shareholder of the Parmino Holding AG which includes the construction company Implenia.

[11] Another major donation, together with the Walter Haefner Foundation, enabled the founding of the new Institute for Theoretical Studies at ETH Zurich 2013.