Bekesy, Georg Von

Bekesy, Georg von (gā`ôrk fən bĕk`ĭshē), 1899–1972, American biophysicist, b. Budapest, Hungary, grad. Univ. of Budapest (Ph.D. 1923). He was (1923–46) a physicist in the research laboratory of the Hungarian telephone system and also taught (1932–46) at the Univ. of Budapest. From 1947 to 1949 he was a research professor at the Caroline Institute, Stockholm. In 1949 he became senior research fellow in the psychoacoustic laboratory at Harvard. He was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea, a snail-shaped cavity of the inner ear.

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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.