The concept of the conditioned reflex was created by prominent Russian physiologist and
psychologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. In a famous experiment, he taught a hungry dog to
drool at the sound of a bell, which had previously been associated with feeding the animal.
Pavlov developed a theoretical framework in which he emphasized the significance of
conditioning and linked human behavior to the nervous system. His ground-breaking work
on digestive secretions earned him the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904.
Early Life and Education:
Ivan Pavlov was the eldest of eleven children when he was born on September 26, 1849, in
Ryazan, Russia. Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov was a Russian orthodox priest, and Varvara
Ivanovna Uspenskaya was his mother. Due to a serious fall injury, he sustained as a young
child, Pavlov spent a lot of his early childhood with his parents in the family home and
garden. He developed a keen interest in natural history and a variety of practical skills
there.
aged 11 enrolling in a church school; Pavlov went on to study physics, mathematics, and
the natural sciences at the university of St. Petersburg.
Pavlov became very interested in science and thought about how science could help
improve and change society.
Career Path:
He studied medicine at the Imperial Academy of Medical Surgery under Sergey Petrovich Botkin, a
renowned physiologist of the time who taught him a great deal about the nervous system after
graduating from St. Petersburg in 1875. In 1879, Pavlov received his medical degree and a gold medal
for his research.
Pavlov continued his postgraduate research in St. Petersburg and was appointed director of Botkin's
clinic's physiological laboratory.
In 1881, he got married to a teacher named Seraphima Vasilievna Karchevskaya. They had five kids
together.
His thesis, "The centrifugal nerves of the heart," earned him his doctorate in 1883.
Pavlov studied dogs' digestion for two years in Germany after earning his doctorate.
He went back to Russia in 1886, but he didn't get a job until 1890 when he was made a professor of
pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy. He was given the chair of physiology in 1895 and stayed
at the Academy until 1924 when he left.
In addition, Pavlov organized and carried out research at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, which
had just been established. Under his direction, the institute grew into one of the most significant centers
of physiological research in the world over the course of four decades.
Contributions and Achievements:
After earning his doctorate from the Academy of Medical Surgery, Ivan Pavlov spent a number of years
carrying out animal-based neurophysiological experiments. He came to the full realization that the most
effective way to comprehend and explain human behavior is in physiological terms rather than mental
terms. The famous experiment that Pavlov is remembered for was when he tested a number of his key
ideas by feeding dogs.
A bell was rung just before feeding to measure how much saliva the dogs produced when they heard it.
When dogs were taught to associate the sound of the bell with food, Pavlov found that they would
produce saliva regardless of whether food followed. The experiment demonstrated that the dogs'
physical response, salivation, was a stimulus-response because it was directly linked to the bell's
stimulus. It was a conditioned reflex that the dogs' salivation continued to rise even after they had heard
the bell but had not been fed.
The whole thing is a great example of classical conditioning because the organism has learned to react
physically and spontaneously to certain conditions through association. These ground-breaking
concepts have been used in behaviorist theory to explain human behavior.
“in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of
the subject has been transformed and expanded,” was the reason he was given the Nobel Prize in 1904.
In 1907, he was made Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Order of
the Legion of Honor in 1915.
Later Life and Death:
Ivan Pavlov died on February 27, 1936, in Leningrad, Soviet Union, from natural causes. He was 86 years
old.
