Ivan Pavlov
Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning
1849 CE to 1936 CE
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 26 [O.S. 14 September] 1849 – February 27 , 1936) is a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning.
From his childhood days Pavlov has demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with an unusual energy which he refers to as "the instinct for research".
Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, are spreading, Pavlov abandons his religious career and devotes his life to science.
In 1870, he enrolls in the physics and mathematics department at the University of Saint Petersburg in order to study natural science.
Pavlov wins the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate.
A survey in the Review of General Psychology, published in 2002, will rank Pavlov as the twenty-fourth most cited psychologist of the twentieth century.
Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning will be found to operate across a variety of behavior therapies and in experimental and clinical settings, such as educational classrooms and even reducing phobias with systematic desensitization.
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Ivan Pavlov begins his study of conditioned reflex in dogs in 1898.
It is at the Institute of Experimental Medicine that Pavlov carries out his classical experiments on the digestive glands.
Thais is how he will eventually win a Nobel prize.
Pavlov investigates the gastric function of dogs, and later, children, by externalizing a salivary gland so he can collect, measure, and analyze the saliva and what response it has to food under different conditions.
He notices that the dogs tend to salivate before food is actually delivered to their mouths, and sets out to investigate this "psychic secretion", as he calls it.
Pavlov's laboratory houses a full-scale kennel for the experimental animals.
Pavlov is interested in observing their long-term physiological processes.
This requires keeping them alive and healthy in order to conduct chronic experiments, as he calls them.
These are experiments over time, designed to understand the normal functions of animals.
This is a new kind of study, because previously experiments had been “acute,” meaning that the dog went through vivisection which ultimately killed the animal in the process.