In his book “Mehr als Schlaf”, Alexander Borbély interweaves an account of his personal life with his research into sleep.
Among the main topics are sleep and its rhythms. The author has researched both topics at MIT and the University of Zurich, among others. The book focuses on Borbély’s so-called two-process model, which combines sleep and its rhythms in a novel way and still shapes sleep research today. The model can also be applied to the interaction of sleep and depression. The author also investigates the current question of whether mobile telecommunication affects sleep and health with results from his own experiments and as head of a national research program.
As this book is a biography, naturally personal experiences play a major role. As a refugee child from Hungary, the author grew up in Switzerland in the post-war years, studied medicine. For several years he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Vice Rector Research of the University of Zurich. Borbély was a long-time ZNZ member.
Since his retirement, Borbély has been engaged in discussions with theologians and has studied the works of thinkers and philosophers. Here the author traces fundamental questions of science and life.
At the end of the work we look back at the lives of the parents and their ancestors, the meetings with descendants and schoolmates in senior age, and the immersion in the Hungarian language and literature.
Mehr als Schlaf
Erinnerungen und Erkundungen eines Schlafforschers
Alexander Borbély
348 pages
ISBN-10: 3749778876
ISBN-13: 978-3749778874
Tredition Gmbh (December 29, 2019)