Hess, Walter Rudolf 1881-1973
Swiss physiologist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Frauenfeld, he studied medicine at Lausanne, Bern, Zurich, Berlin and Kiel universities, receiving his degree from Zurich in 1906. As Professor of Physiology and director of the Physiology Institute of the University of Zurich (1917-51), he studied the regulation of blood pressure and heart rate, and their relationship to respiration, and from 1925 worked on the function of structures at the base of the brain. He developed methods of stimulating localized areas of the brain by means of fine needle electrodes, which permitted major advances in the study of brain function. He was able to show that stimulating different parts of the hypothalamus causes changes in body temperature, blood pressure, respiration, and also anger, sexual arousal, and sleep. He was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Ant�nio Egas Moniz.