Paul Degen (24 March 1941 – 30 May 2007) was a Swiss illustrator, caricaturist, painter and sculptor. He is mostly known for the cartoons he did for The New York Times and his 34 title illustrations for The New Yorker magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1992 he was awarded the Basel Innovation Prize for inventing the "ROMA birth wheel."      

After his education as a lithographor at the Wassermann Ag in Basel and graduation from the Kunstschule Basel (Basel College of Commercial Art), Degen continued his education at the graphic design studio of Theo Ballmer and at the Académie Julian in Paris.[1]

In the 1960s Degen worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator with Herbert Leupin, Celestino Piatti, and Fritz Bühler at the Atelier Eidenbenz in Switzerland.

In 1970 he moved to New York and worked, besides freelancing as a cartoonist and illustrator for The New York Times, Esquire, Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly, at the Push Pin Studios with Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast.

After living in Brasil, Peru, Hawaii, Bali, and his return to New York at the end of the 1988, Degen moved back to Liestal near Basel in 1990.