BÉKÉSY, György
* 3. 6. 1899, Budapest, Hungary
† 2. 6. 1972, Honolulu, USA
physicist
B. began his study of physics at the University of Bern. He wrote his dissertation at the University of Budapest and began his career at a trial station of the Hungarian Post Office in Budapest. He worked there until 1946 and engaged in research on acoustics. From 1933 onwards, he lectured at the University of Budapest. In 1940, he was appointed professor of general physics at this university. In 1946, he went to the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm as a guest professor, from where he no longer returned to Hungary, but emigrated to the USA. He worked in a physics and acoustics laboratory at Harvard until 1966, and moved to Hawaii the following year, where he led a laboratory for sensory research at the local university until his death. His entire life, B. was also dedicated to ear or hearing problems. He researched the functions of auditory canals in the inner ear and their biophysical and bioelectrical phenomena that affect hearing or its sharpness, thus causing deafness. He received a Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1961 for his work regarding the explanation of the mechanisms in the inner ear.
