Learning about Ivan Pavlov

Pavlov is probably the most or one of the most renowned men of physiology's history. He wrote numerous papers and did an in depth study in determining if responses to differing stimuli's could condition the mind of animals and humans to react to and respond in a set part to events that are reoccurring. 

It is well documented as to his birth in 1849 in a small town in Russia, and that he lived a long life until 1936. Much is known of Ivan Pavlov's public life, but very little is known about the man behind this distinguished career. As a young boy, his family wished for him to follow in his father's footsteps and go into the religious services, but as a young man he left the seminar and went to the University of St. Petersburg instead. 

      

                

There he studied chemistry and physiology, and he received his doctorate in 1879. Most of what we can find on Pavlov is related to his studies and his work which is what he went on to devote his life.

In 1881, Pavlov married Seraphima (Sara) Vasilievna Karchevskaya, a teacher, the daughter of a doctor in the Black Sea fleet. She first had a miscarriage, said to be due to her having to run after her very fast-walking husband. Subsequently they had a son, Wirchik, who died very suddenly as a child; three sons, Vladimir, Victor and Vsevolod, one of whom was a well-known physicist and professor of physics at Leningrad in 1925, and a daughter, Vera.

"Pavlov was held in extremely high regard in his country -- both as Russia and the Soviet Union -- and around the world. In 1904, he won the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine for his research on digestion. He was outspoken and often at odds with the Soviet government later in his life, but his world renown, and work that his nation was proud of, kept him free from persecution. He worked actively in the lab until his death at age 87."