Georg von Bekesy

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Hungarian–American physicist (1899–1972)

Békésy, the son of a diplomat in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, studied chemistry at the University of Bern and physics at Budapest University, where he obtained his PhD in 1923. He immediately joined the research staff of the Hungarian Telephone Laboratory where he remained until 1946 while simultaneously holding the chair of experimental physics at Budapest University from 1939. He left Hungary in 1947, via the Swedish Karolinska Institute, for America, where he served first as a senior fellow in psychophysics at Harvard from 1949 to 1966 and finally as professor of sensory science at the University of Hawaii from 1966 until his death.

Békésy first worked on problems of long-distance telephone communication before moving to the study of the physical mechanisms of the cochlea within the inner ear. When he began this study it was generally thought, following the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, that sound waves entering the ear selectively stimulated a particular fiber of the basilar membrane; this in turn stimulated hairs of the organ of Corti resting on it, which transferred the signal to the auditory nerve.

Using the techniques of microsurgery, Békésy was able to show that a different mechanism is involved. He found that when sound enters the cochlea, a traveling wave sweeps along the basilar membrane. The wave amplitude increases to a maximum, falling sharply thereafter; it is this maximum point to which the organ of Corti is sensitive. For this insight into the mechanism of hearing, Békésy was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.

(bā'kā-shē), Georg von 1899–1972.

Hungarian-born American physiologist. He won a 1961 Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning the mechanisms of stimulation within the cochlea of the ear.

(1899–1972). Hungarian physicist and physiologist, the son of a Hungarian diplomat. He spent his early years in Munich, Constantinople, Zurich, and Bern. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Budapest, and remained in Budapest until 1946. After a year in Stockholm he moved to the psychoacoustic laboratory in Harvard, where he remained until 1966. He then moved to Honolulu to become professor of sensory sciences at the University of Hawaii. He continued in active research there until shortly before his death.

Békésy is most famous for his work on the inner ear or cochlea. He was the first to observe directly the patterns of vibration on the basilar membrane inside the cochlea. He found that sound evoked a pattern of wave motion which travelled from one end of the membrane towards the other, increasing in amplitude up to a certain point, and then decreasing. He found that the position of maximum vibration varied systematically with the frequency of the sound, thus providing the basis for the frequency-analysing power of the ear. He carried out this work first on models of the cochlea, and later on preparations of human temporal bones and on the cochleas of living animals. Most of his work in this field was carried out in Hungary. (See also hearing.)

In Stockholm Békésy invented a new method for measuring thresholds of hearing, and devised a new audiometer to go with it. The Békésy audiometer is still widely used in clinical hearing testing and in auditory research.

At Harvard the emphasis of his work shifted from the mechanics of the ear to biophysics, and particularly the mechanism by which mechanical vibration on the basilar membrane is transformed into neural impulses. Later still he conducted perceptual experiments on a number of different senses, including hearing, sight, smell, and taste.

Békésy's work on hearing is summarized in his fine book Experiments in Hearing (1962). The quality of his work was recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1961, for 'discoveries concerning the physical mechanisms of excitation in the cochlea'. The award was celebrated by a special issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1962.

(Published 1987)

— Brian C. J. Moore

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