Selye János

Hans Selye
Bust of Hans Selye at Selye János University, Komárno, Slovakia
Born	(1907-01-26)January 26, 1907 Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died	October 16, 1982(1982-10-16) (aged 75) Montreal, Québec, Canada
Other names	Selye János (Hungarian)

János Hugo Bruno "Hans" Selye, CC (/ˈhænz ˈsɛljeɪ/; Hungarian: Selye János; January 26, 1907 – October 16, 1982), was a pioneering Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist of Hungarian origin. He conducted much important scientific work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to stressors. Although he did not recognize all of the many aspects of glucocorticoids, Selye was aware of their role in the stress response. Charlotte Gerson considers him the first to demonstrate the existence of biological stress.

Selye was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 26 January 1907. He grew up in Komárno, Slovakia, and the Selye János University a Hungarian language university in that town bears his name. He became a Doctor of Medicine and Chemistry in Prague in 1929, went to Johns Hopkins University on a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship in 1931 and then went to McGill University in Montreal where he started researching the issue of stress in 1936. In 1945, he joined the Université de Montréal where he had 40 assistants and worked with 15,000 laboratory animals. Kantha (1992), in a survey of an elite group of scientists who have authored over 1,000 research publications, identified Selye as one who had published 1,700 research papers, 15 monographs, and 7 popular books. He died on 16 October 1982 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was a nominee to the Nobel prize for the first time in 1949. He often visited Hungary, giving lectures as well as interviews in Hungarian television programs. His book "The Stress of Life" appeared in Hungarian as "Az Életünk és a stressz" in 1964 and becoming a bestseller.