János Selye

(1907 – 1982)

Physician, endocrinologist, researcher.‘The Einstein of Medicine’.

Pioneer in research into stress. In 1926, he started to develop his now-famous theory of the influence of stress on people’s ability to cope with and adapt to the pressures of injury and disease. He discovered that patients with a variety of ailments manifested many similar symptoms, which he ultimately attributed to their bodies efforts to respond to the stresses of being ill. He called this collection of symptoms stress syndrome, or general adaptation syndrome (GAS). He wrote some 30 books and more than 1,500 articles on stress and related problems.

 

Invented: the concept of stress, GAS.

János Selye