Békésy, Georg Von

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.

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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.

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Békésy, Georg Von 

Born June 3, 1899, in Budapest; died June 13, 1972, in Honolulu, Hawaii. American physicist, biophysicist, and physiologist. Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A Hungarian by birth, Békésy studied at the University of Bern. After taking a degree at the University of Budapest in 1923, he engaged in research in Budapest, Berlin, and Stockholm. He emigrated to the United States in 1947.

Békésy’s principal works dealt with biophysics and with the physiology of hearing. He discovered the vibratory patterns induced in the basilar membrane of the cochlea by sound and formulated a theory of the initial amplitude-frequency analysis of sound performed in an organ of hearing. Békésy studied the transmission of sound in the middle ear and proposed a technique and a device (the Békésy audiometer) for testing hearing. Békésy investigated bone conduction of sound, hearing by space conduction, and perceptual contrast in sensory systems,

Békésy received a Nobel Prize in 1961 and was a member of the Leopoldina German Academy of Researchers in Natural Sciences.

WORKS

Experiments in Hearing. New York, 1960.
Sensory Inhibition. New York, 1967.