Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Virginia Farm, 1987
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004), was a Swiss-born psychiatrist renowned for her pioneering work in Near-Death Studies. Her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying (1969) introduced the Kübler-Ross model, which outlines the Five Stages of Grief®: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model has since influenced various fields, including corporate training on change management, as embodied in The Kübler-Ross Change Curve®.
In 1970, Dr. Kübler-Ross delivered the prestigious Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality at Harvard University, further exploring themes of death and dying. In the early 1970’s she was one of the founders of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (IWG). Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she played a key role in establishing over 50 hospices globally and, in 1984, attempted to launch the world’s first prison hospice in Vacaville, California.
She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007 and received twenty honorary degrees over her lifetime. By July 1982, she had taught approximately 125,000 students across various institutions in death and dying courses. After retiring in 1994 following a arson attack on her home—while she was working to establish an AIDS hospice for abandoned babies—she spent her final years in Arizona with her son, Kenneth Ross. During this period, she authored four additional books, including On Grief and Grieving.
Dr. Kübler-Ross passed away in August 2004 at an assisted living center in Scottsdale, Arizona. Over her career, she wrote 24 books translated into 44 languages. Since her death, her contributions have been honored with several prestigious awards. She was posthumously awarded the William C. Menninger Award by the American College of Physicians in 2005 and the Medal of Honor from the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association in 2006. In 2019, her family donated her archives to Stanford University, ensuring her legacy and contributions to the field of end-of-life care are preserved and accessible for future generations. Additionally, the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, founded by her son Ken Ross, continues her legacy by supporting end-of-life care initiatives and grief counseling programs in more than a dozen countries.