Békésy, Georg von

(born June 3, 1899, Budapest, Hung.—died June 13, 1972, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. physicist and physiologist. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1947 and taught at Harvard University in 1947–66. He discovered that sound vibrations travel along a membrane in the cochlea in waves, peaking at different places, where nerve receptors determine pitch and loudness. His research resulted in greatly expanded understanding of the hearing process, partly through instrumentation Békésy had helped design, and the differentiation of forms of deafness, which permitted the selection of proper treatment. He received a 1961 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Békésy, Georg von (1899–1972) physiologist, physicist; born in Budapest, Hungary. He was concurrently a physicist at the University of Budapest and the Hungarian Post Office, which had charge of Hungary's newly installed telephone system (1923–46). There his work on improving telephone communication led to his later investigations of the mechanisms of human hearing. After the Russian takeover of Budapest, he went to the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (1946–47), then emigrated to the U.S.A. to join Harvard (1947–66), where he continued his studies of the human ear and how it transmits sounds to the brain. At the University of Hawaii (1966–72), he expanded his research to include other senses. In addition to receiving many awards for his pioneering investigations of aural physiology, he became the first physicist to win a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine (1961). He left his extensive art collection to the Nobel Foundation.