Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, born in Zurich, who became a founding figure in the study of death, dying and end-of-life care. Working directly with terminally ill patients, she developed what became known as the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, a framework she set out in her landmark 1969 book On Death and Dying, later named one of the New York Public Library's Books of the Century, and her work reshaped hospice and palliative care practice worldwide. By 1982 she had taught an estimated 125,000 students in courses on death and dying across medical schools and hospitals, and she was later named one of Time magazine's hundred most important thinkers of the twentieth century.