Georg von Békésy

Georg von Békésy was a Hungarian-American biophysicist born 3 June 1899. Using strobe photography and silver flakes as markers, he observed the basilar membrane moving like a surface wave when sound hit it. The cochlea's structure meant different frequencies peaked at different points along the membrane's coil: high frequencies vibrated the base, low frequencies the apex. He concluded that sound wave frequencies disperse locally before exciting distinct nerve fibers running from cochlea to brain. In 1961 he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for that work on mammalian hearing. He di…