Robert Bárány
Robert Bárány is the father of Neurotology, an area of Medicine that explores the boundaries of Otology and Neurology. He was born in Vienna on April 22, 1876. Vienna, at that time, was a part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
His father, Ignaz Bárány, was a bank official. His mother, Maria Hock Bárány, was the daughter of a well-known Prague scientist, and it was her intellectual influence that was most pronounced in the family. Robert was the eldest of six children.
He studied Medicine at the Vienna University, graduating in 1900. After his graduation he spent one year in Frankfurt studying general medicine and then studied neurology and psychiatry in Freiburg. It was at this time that he became interested in neurological problems.
In 1903 he was appointed as “demonstrator” at the Otological Clinic of Vienna University, working with Professor Adam Politzer. This was a very productive period, in which he created the caloric tests for studying the labyrinthine function, pefected the rotatory tests and also made studies on the cerebellar function. He was well acquainted with the researches conducted by Flourens, Purkinje, Mach, Breuer and others, and made important contributions to the physiology and pathology of the labyrinth.
This phase of intense work was suddenly interrupted. Being of Jewish descent, Bárány was sent, at the start of the First World War, to a fortress on the border between Poland and Russia as a medical officer. He continued to study the connection between the vestibular apparatus and the central nervous system and also developed a surgical technique for dealing with bullet wounds to the brain.
In 1915 the Russians occupied the area and Bárány made a prisoner of war. He was taken to a primitive area in central Asia where he caught malaria. He was somewhat fortunate in that the medicalcommander in the small city had heard of him and placed him in charge of otolaryngology for both the Russians and the Austrian prisoners. After Bárány successfully treated the local mayor and his family, he was invited to their home for dinner every night.
In 1914 Bárány was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in Neurotology.
It was while he was still a prisoner of war that he received the news that he had won the Nobel Prize. Thanks to the personal intervention of Prince Carl of Sweden and with the help of the Red Cross that Bárány was released in 1916. He went, then, to Stockholm to receive his prize and made a beautiful speech.
Bárány returned to Vienna the same year, but was bitterly disappointed by the attitude of his Austrian colleagues, who reproached him for having made only incomplete references in his works to the discoveries of other scientists, on whose theories they said his work was based. These accusations were investigated by the Nobel Prize Committee, which found them groundless.
It is interesting to quote Sigmund Freud’s comments on this episode: “The granting of the Nobel Prize to Bárány... has aroused sad thoughts about how helpless an individual is about gaining the respect of the crowd."
The attacks resulted in Bárány leaving Vienna to accept the post of Professor of Otology at the University of Uppsala, where he remained for the remainder of his life. Gunnar Holmgren, Professor of Otolaryngology in Stockholm, and other famous Swedish otologists, published a paper in defense of Bárány.
While at Uppsala, Bárány studied the role of the cerebellum in controlling body movement and devised tests for disturbances in cerebellar function. He published a total of 184 scientific papers and received many honorary degrees from several universities, including the University of Stockholm. Austria issued a stamp in his honor in 1976, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, in spite of the fact that accusations that he received in 1916 were never cleared by the University of Vienna.
During the latter part of his life Bárány had a number of strokes, that resulted in partial paralysis.
Bárány married Ida Felicitas Berger in 1909. They had two sons – Ernst Bárány, physician and member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and Franz Bárány, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Carolinska Institute in Stockholm – and one daughter – Ingrid Bárány, psychiatrist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Bárány died on April 8, 1936, shortly before his sixtieth birthday in Uppsala. An international meeting was organized to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, but unfortunately he died a few days before it began.
Bárány was described as a quiet and solitary man, fanatically devoted to his work. Yet at home, he also enjoyed music and played the piano well; he particularly liked the music of composer Robert Schumann.
During his last days he began to study Judaism and donated his library to the University of Jerusalem. His memory has been kept alive by the Bárány Society (of which I am proud to be a member), established in 1960 to organize international meetings on vestibular research. There is also a Bárány medal, first awarded by the University of Uppsala in 1948, honoring scientists for important contributions on the vestibular system.
His father, Ignaz Bárány, was a bank official. His mother, Maria Hock Bárány, was the daughter of a well-known Prague scientist, and it was her intellectual influence that was most pronounced in the family. Robert was the eldest of six children.
He studied Medicine at the Vienna University, graduating in 1900. After his graduation he spent one year in Frankfurt studying general medicine and then studied neurology and psychiatry in Freiburg. It was at this time that he became interested in neurological problems.
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| Robert Bárány |
This phase of intense work was suddenly interrupted. Being of Jewish descent, Bárány was sent, at the start of the First World War, to a fortress on the border between Poland and Russia as a medical officer. He continued to study the connection between the vestibular apparatus and the central nervous system and also developed a surgical technique for dealing with bullet wounds to the brain.
In 1915 the Russians occupied the area and Bárány made a prisoner of war. He was taken to a primitive area in central Asia where he caught malaria. He was somewhat fortunate in that the medicalcommander in the small city had heard of him and placed him in charge of otolaryngology for both the Russians and the Austrian prisoners. After Bárány successfully treated the local mayor and his family, he was invited to their home for dinner every night.
In 1914 Bárány was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in Neurotology.
It was while he was still a prisoner of war that he received the news that he had won the Nobel Prize. Thanks to the personal intervention of Prince Carl of Sweden and with the help of the Red Cross that Bárány was released in 1916. He went, then, to Stockholm to receive his prize and made a beautiful speech.
Bárány returned to Vienna the same year, but was bitterly disappointed by the attitude of his Austrian colleagues, who reproached him for having made only incomplete references in his works to the discoveries of other scientists, on whose theories they said his work was based. These accusations were investigated by the Nobel Prize Committee, which found them groundless.
It is interesting to quote Sigmund Freud’s comments on this episode: “The granting of the Nobel Prize to Bárány... has aroused sad thoughts about how helpless an individual is about gaining the respect of the crowd."
The attacks resulted in Bárány leaving Vienna to accept the post of Professor of Otology at the University of Uppsala, where he remained for the remainder of his life. Gunnar Holmgren, Professor of Otolaryngology in Stockholm, and other famous Swedish otologists, published a paper in defense of Bárány.
While at Uppsala, Bárány studied the role of the cerebellum in controlling body movement and devised tests for disturbances in cerebellar function. He published a total of 184 scientific papers and received many honorary degrees from several universities, including the University of Stockholm. Austria issued a stamp in his honor in 1976, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, in spite of the fact that accusations that he received in 1916 were never cleared by the University of Vienna.
During the latter part of his life Bárány had a number of strokes, that resulted in partial paralysis.
Bárány married Ida Felicitas Berger in 1909. They had two sons – Ernst Bárány, physician and member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and Franz Bárány, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Carolinska Institute in Stockholm – and one daughter – Ingrid Bárány, psychiatrist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Bárány died on April 8, 1936, shortly before his sixtieth birthday in Uppsala. An international meeting was organized to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, but unfortunately he died a few days before it began.
Bárány was described as a quiet and solitary man, fanatically devoted to his work. Yet at home, he also enjoyed music and played the piano well; he particularly liked the music of composer Robert Schumann.
During his last days he began to study Judaism and donated his library to the University of Jerusalem. His memory has been kept alive by the Bárány Society (of which I am proud to be a member), established in 1960 to organize international meetings on vestibular research. There is also a Bárány medal, first awarded by the University of Uppsala in 1948, honoring scientists for important contributions on the vestibular system.
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