otologist
Born and educated in Vienna, he graduated from the University of Vienna in 1900. During the following five years he did research in hospitals at Frankfurt am Main, Heidelberg and Freiburg, Germany. He returned to Vienna in 1905 and became privatdozent and assistant in the clinic of Politzer. By 1914 his research encompassed all aspects of the physiology and pathology of the inner ear. His greatest discovery was a method that enables the examination of each of the two labyrinths, separately, by using cold and hot water. He was also the first to describe a practical operative procedure for otosclerosis cases. Robert Barany discovered the connection between the functions of the labyrinth and cerebellum (little brain) that are essential for maintaining the balance of the body and in this way he also laid the basis for diagnosis of diseases of the little brain. Barany was the first to employ new methods of surgery to enable acoustic waves to reach the inner ear.
During World War I, Dr. Barany served as a surgeon in the Austrian-Hungarian army. In 1915 he was taken prisoner of war on the Russian front, where he later found out that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1914. The Russians, on hearing about the prize, released Dr. Barany in 1916 in the course of a prisoner exchange.
Dr. Barany, being a Jew, was never made a full professor at the University of Vienna. However, in 1917, he was appointed professor of otology at the University of Upsala, Sweden. Barany’s scientific works concentrate on labyrinth-pathology and physiology. His major works include Der primaere Wundnaht bei Schussverletzungen des Gehirns, which appeared in the weekly magazine Wiener klinische Wochenschrift (1916,) and Die Radicaloperation des Ohres ohne Gehoergangplastik bei chronischen Mittel-phreiterungen (1923).
Only towards the end of his life, when the Nazis came to power, did Barany begin to show any interest in Judaism and Jewish questions. In his will he left his valuable library to the National Library in Jerusalem.