Robert Bárány

Robert Bárány (1876 to 1936) was an Austrian-born otologist who received the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the physiology and pathology of the vestibular apparatus. Born in Vienna, he graduated from the medical school of Vienna University in 1900. While syringing a patient's ear canal to relieve dizzy spells he found that fluid which was too cold brought on vertigo and nystagmus, and that warming the fluid reversed the direction of the nystagmus. He followed this with a series of experiments on what he called the caloric reaction, work that made surgical treatment of diseases of the vestibular organ possible, and he also investigated other aspects of equilibrium control, including the function of the cerebellum. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is said to have been first described in medical texts by him. He served as a civilian surgeon in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I and was captured by Russian forces, so he was in a prisoner of war camp when the prize was awarded in 1914; he was released in 1916 after diplomatic efforts and received it that year. From 1917 until his death in Uppsala he was professor at the Uppsala University Faculty of Medicine.