József Baló

József Mátyás Baló (10 November 1895 – 9 October 1979) was a Hungarian physician and academic. He researched extensively into neurological conditions, cardiovascular conditions and with his wife isolated the enzyme elastase. He published numerous related papers and authored a medical book. He gave his name to Baló's disease.

Early life Born in Transylvania, the son of a minor noble, he graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University Medical School in 1919. He committed himself to pathology because at that time he wanted to work across the whole medical spectrum and this offered the best possibility. This report was published in English the following year (1927) in the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry where it generated wide interest. Baló named the condition "encephalitis periaxialis concentrica", which was later to be known as Baló's Disease. The disease had been noted before but Baló recorded it in more detail and published it. The disease belongs to a broad cluster of diseases which are characterised by degeneration and demyelination. Returning to work at Pázmány Péter University after the war he was appointed chairman of the Institute of Forensic Pathology, the following year to be appointed Chairman of the Institute of Pathology, remaining in this position until his retirement in 1967. His primary goal was to rebuild the institute which had been badly damaged during the war. He went on to found the Cancer Research Institute and after his retirement continued to participate in research and lectures until his death. In 1975 he received the newly established Krompecher Ödön medallion of the Hungarian Society of Oncology.