1926 - 2004

Psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross devoted her professional life to investigating death. In the 1970s she was instrumental in breaking the taboos that surround the process of dying.

Her best known work, "On Death and Dying", published in 1969, described the five stages which people go through when faced with the prospect of their own imminent death. The stages she described are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Not everyone experiences all of these stages, she said, but at least two are always present.

Kübler-Ross herself nearly died at birth: she was the last of three triplets, and weighed a mere two pounds. She always had the ambition to become a doctor, but after the end of the war, before she started her studies, she worked as a volunteer helping the shattered communities of Poland and Germany, including concentration camp victims. It was an experience that marked her deeply.

While at medical school in Zurich she met her American husband, and they moved to the US in the 1950s. She became a citizen in 1961.

It was in the US that she trained as a psychiatrist, and started her research into dying. She was appalled at the callousness and dishonesty with which the terminally ill were treated, and encouraged them to pour out their feelings to her.

It was an unusual and controversial specialization, and she ran into denial even on the part of some doctors. But she also found interest and support among medical staff and patients, and her weekly seminars, at which the terminally ill spoke frankly about their feelings and experiences, attracted ever larger audiences. It was their success that prompted her to write her first and most famous book.

In 1999 Time magazine named her one of the century's greatest minds. Kübler-Ross's influence has been far-reaching, even on those who have never heard of her.