Foregoers

György (Georg von) Békésy (1899-1972) the son of Alexander von Békésy, a diplomat, and his wife, Paula, received his early education in Munich, Constantinople, Budapest, and in a private school in Zurich. He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1923 from the University of Budapest.

He was the recipient of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medical Science „for his discoveries concerning the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea”. The key element of Békésy’s life work was to observe and describe mechanical-physical processes in the internal ear, and create a new theory related to the nature of hearing. He was the first to make an instrument that functioned similarly to the internal ear.