Nobel Prize winner with dog research: Who is Ivan Petrovic Pavlov?
Pavlov, who has about forty dogs, contributed to the scientific world with his classical conditioning experiment.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849, in Ryazan, Russia. Ivan Pavlov, who spent his youth in this city and enrolled in the Ryazan Religious School for higher education, interrupted his education there to receive a more scientific education, and enrolled in Saint Petersburg University and was entitled to receive his doctorate from this school in 1878.
In the 1890s, Ivan Pavlov began to work on this subject, as a result of his research on dogs, he discovered that dogs began to salivate even before the food reached them. Generally, dogs conditioned to certain responses would salivate as soon as they heard the footsteps of the assistant who brought them food each day, he observed. This observation led to the great work that the scientist would do.
Ivan Pavlov's famous classical conditioning experiment was exactly as follows; The bell is rung several times for the dog chosen by the scientist as a test subject. But the dog does not react. Meat is served afterward. The dog drools. Then the bell is rung with the meat. Later, when the bell is rung even though meat is not given, it is seen that the dog's mouth is watering. This is what is called the conditioned or conditioned reflex. Pavlov suggested that this behavior is one of the manifestations of high nervous activity, which is identical to psychological activity, and emphasized that the only valid approach in psychology is the experimental method. This work earned Ivan Pavlov the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1904. This work influenced many successful scientists such as Carl Jung and William Sargant in the following years.
Ivan Pavlov, who devoted his whole life to science and was one of the most devoted followers of the positivist school, maintained this attitude until the moment of his death. Ivan Pavlov, who did not give up his studies for science even after a tram accident at the age of 73, was one of the most loved scientists by the Soviet administration; so much so that it was supported by Lenin himself.
Ivan Pavlov died on February 27, 1936, in Leningrad, USSR.