Bárány, Robert (1876-1936)

Austrian physician and ear specialist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1914 for his investigations into the physiology and pathology of the equilibrium organs of the inner ear.

Bárány was born and educated in Vienna, taking his MD at the university there in 1900. In 1907 he published his major work Physiologie und Pathologie des Bogengang-Apparates beim Menschen/Physiology and Pathology of the Human Semicircular Canal Apparatus. He also contributed to many textbooks and periodicals on his special subject and balance-related ailments, such as sea-sickness. After military service in World War I, he moved to Sweden in 1926 to head a department at Uppsala treating diseases of the ear, nose, and throat.