Hans Selye
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Hans Selye (Selye János, 1907 - 1982), was a Canadian endocrinologist of Austrian-Hungarian origin. His mother was Austrian; his father was Hungarian. He did much important theoretical work on the non-specific response of the organism to stress. While he did not recognize all of the many aspects of glucocorticoids, Selye was aware of their role in this response. Some commentators considered him the first to demonstrate the existence of a separate stress disease, the stress syndrome, or General adaptation syndrome. To grossly oversimplify to the point of circular argument, Selye discovered and documented that stress differs from other physical responses in that stress is stressful whether the one receives good or bad news, whether the impulse is positive or negative. He called negative stress distress and positive stress eustress.
Selye allegedly discovered the stress syndrome in medical school, when he observed that people who had various illnesses seemed to share a quality of "sickness" that was highly similar.
He wrote Stress without Distress (1974) and The Stress of Life (1956). He worked as a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the Université de Montréal.
In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.de:Hans Selye pl:Hans Selye