Ivan Pavlov

Natalie Drucker

C. Percy

Psychology 101

5/5/15

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov made an enormous impact on psychology. He made astounding discoveries that helped mold this scientific study. Pavlov didn’t view psychology as an exact science like physiology or chemistry, stating: “It is still open to discussion whether psychology is a natural science or whether it can be regarded as a science at all.”

Ivan Pavlov was born on September 14th, 1849 in Ryazan, Russia. His father was a priest in the small village where he lived so, naturally, he attended a church school and continued his schooling at a theological seminary. In 1881 he married a woman named Serafima Karchevskaya. The couple struggled with financial issues the first years of their marriage. Their first born son died suddenly during childhood, leaving them profoundly depressed. Eventually Ivan and Serafima had four more children, the youngest passing from pancreatic cancer in 1935. Being so inspired by Charles Darwin and the Russian father of psychology, I.M. Sechenov, Pavlov decided to give up his studies in theology and focus on a more scientific pursuit. Pavlov attended the University of St. Petersburg where he studied chemistry and physiology. He received a degree of candidate of Natural Sciences in 1875. Pavlov continued his education at the Imperial Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. In 1883 he completed his thesis on the nerves of the heart and shortly after he received his doctor of medicine. After graduating, Pavlov worked under Carl Ludwig, a cardiovascular physiologist in Leipzig, Germany, and a man named Rudolf Heidenhain, a gastroenterologist in Breslau, Poland. Together they created an external pouch on a dog’s stomach to evaluate the secretions of the digestive and gastrointestinal system. Pavlov continued on to study cardiac physiology where he spent two years at St. Petersburg in a laboratory. Pavlov would oversee and direct the Department of Physiology at the Institute of Experimental...