September 26, 1849
В Ryazan, born into a family of priests Ivan Pavlov — physiologist, the first Russian Nobel laureate. A symbol of Soviet science.
At the age of 20, he read Sechenov’s “Reflexes of the Brain” – this book changed his life.
The human mind searches for the reason for everything that happens, and when it comes to the final reason, it is God.
He graduated from the Medical-Surgical Academy and interned with renowned German physiologists. He headed the laboratory at the clinic. Botkin.
He invented the "sham feeding" system, creating a hole in a dog's esophagus to prevent ingested food from reaching the stomach. By collecting the secretions secreted by the glands at the sight of food, he made a number of discoveries in the field of reflexes. He also learned how to extract natural gastric juice to treat gastrointestinal diseases. At 55, he received the Nobel Prize for this research.
After the revolution, he lived in poverty, but refused to move to Sweden, where he was promised any institute he wanted. Upon learning of this, Lenin ordered that all conditions for Pavlov's work be provided and that an institute be built in Koltušakh under Leningrad.
Whatever I do, I always think that I am serving this, as much as my strength allows me, first of all, my fatherland, our Russian science.
He studied the physiology of higher nervous activity, developed the theory of temperaments, and laid the foundations of psychosomatics.
He developed the theory of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes: in order for a dog to salivate, it was not necessary to see food—the appearance of a person in a white coat was enough.
When I approach an experiment that ultimately involves the death of an animal, I suppress the caustic reproach that with a crude, ignorant hand I am breaking an inexpressibly artistic mechanism. But I endure it in the interests of truth, for the benefit of people.
He openly criticized the Soviet government.
Long-term terror and unbridled tyranny of the authorities are turning our Asian nature into a shameful slavish one.
We live in a society where the state is everything and the individual is nothing. Such a society has no future, no matter how many Volkhovstroi and Dnieper Hydroelectric Stations we build.
He worked at the institute in Koltushi until his death. He died of pneumonia in 1936, at the age of 86.