60 Fun Facts About Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov is best remembered for discovering which form of learning?

He stumbled onto it while studying digestion, noticing that his dogs began salivating before any food appeared.

Which animal did Pavlov use in his most famous experiments?

His laboratory kept a full-scale kennel so the animals could live long, healthy lives through years of long-term experiments.

In which year did Pavlov win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?

He had been nominated every year since 1901, but earlier nominations were too scattered across laboratory findings to point at a single discovery.

Pavlov's Nobel Prize was awarded for his research on which subject?

The conditioning work that made him a household name came later and was never what the Nobel committee honoured.

Pavlov's 1904 Nobel made him the first laureate from which country?

He was later fêted by the Soviet state he openly despised, which kept his laboratory funded regardless.

In which town was Pavlov born in 1849?

He attended the local church school and then its theological seminary before abandoning the clergy for science.

Pavlov was the eldest of how many children?

He willingly did the dishes and looked after his siblings, and spent summers gardening, rowing and swimming.

What was the occupation of Pavlov's father, Peter Dmitrievich?

His mother Varvara was a homemaker; the son of a priest was expected to follow him into the church.

Why did Pavlov not begin formal schooling until he was 11?

He could already read at seven; the fall was from a high wall onto stone pavement.

Before turning to science, Pavlov was training for which career?

He left the theological seminary without graduating, inspired by the writings of literary critic Dmitry Pisarev.

Which physiologist, whom Pavlov called "the father of physiology," inspired him to become a scientist?

Sechenov's Reflexes of the Brain argued that all mental activity was reflex in origin, an idea Pavlov spent his life testing.

In 1870 Pavlov enrolled to study natural science at which university?

He entered through the physics and mathematics department and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences in 1875.

Pavlov's prize-winning student research project studied the nerves of which organ?

It won him a prestigious university award in his fourth year and pointed him toward a life in physiology.

Pavlov graduated from the Medical Military Academy in 1879 with what distinction?

He then won a competitive fellowship for postgraduate work at the same academy.

Pavlov's 1883 doctoral thesis concerned the centrifugal nerves of which organ?

The thesis also set out his ideas on the trophic function of the nervous system, decades before his fame.

Which clinician invited Pavlov in 1878 to run the physiological laboratory at his clinic?

Botkin's clinic gave the penniless young researcher a base for the work that led to his doctorate.

From 1884 to 1886 Pavlov studied abroad in Leipzig and Breslau, in which country?

In Leipzig he worked with Carl Ludwig; in Breslau he refined a technique for studying digestion in dogs.

The exteriorized dog-stomach section used to study digestion is the Heidenhain or Pavlov what?

Pavlov's improvement over Heidenhain's version was keeping the external nerve supply intact.

Pavlov turned down chairs of pharmacology at Warsaw and at which Siberian university?

His application for the physiology chair in the capital had just been rejected, but he still refused to leave the capital.

In 1891 Pavlov was invited to organise the Department of Physiology at which St. Petersburg institution?

Under his 45-year direction it became one of the most important centres of physiological research in the world.

For roughly how many years did Pavlov direct physiology at the institute he joined in 1891?

He simultaneously held the physiology chair at the Military Medical Academy for three decades.

Beginning in 1901, over how many successive years was Pavlov nominated for the Nobel Prize before he won?

The early nominations failed because they cited a spread of laboratory findings rather than one specific discovery.

Pavlov's 1897 book, the fruit of 12 years of research, was titled The Work of the ... what?

It summarised the surgical fistula experiments that let him measure gastric secretions in living animals.

Pavlov called his long-term studies on healthy, living dogs by what name?

Earlier physiology relied on acute experiments, in which vivisection ultimately killed the animal.

According to a report by H. G. Wells, what did Pavlov grow in his laboratory during the Allied blockade?

A 1921 article in Science reassured readers he was raising them "only as a pastime" while still doing science.

From 1921 until his death Pavlov held frank laboratory discussions named after which day of the week?

At these meetings he spoke openly on many topics, including his sceptical views on psychology.

In 1923 Pavlov said he wouldn't sacrifice even the hind leg of which animal to Communism?

He never hid his contempt for Soviet Communism, despite the honours and money the regime showered on his lab.

To which Soviet leader did Pavlov write in 1927 saying he was ashamed to be a Russian?

He was protesting the treatment of Russian intellectuals; remarkably, he kept his laboratory and his freedom.

After whose 1934 murder did Pavlov write to Molotov criticising the mass persecutions that followed?

He asked for the reconsideration of cases involving several people he knew personally.

Pavlov died in February 1936 of what?

He was conscious to the end and treated his own death as one final experiment.

How old was Pavlov when he died?

He was given a grand funeral, and his study and laboratory were preserved as a museum.

As he lay dying, Pavlov asked a student sitting by his bed to do what?

He wanted to leave unique evidence of the subjective experience of the terminal phase of life.

Pavlov's grave lies in the writers' section of which St. Petersburg burial ground?

The Literatorskie mostki section is also the resting place of Turgenev and Mendeleev.

Pavlov's typology of nervous systems updated the four temperaments of which two ancient physicians?

He renamed choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine and melancholic as the strong impetuous, strong quiet, strong lively and weak types.

Pavlov's term for the body shutting down under overwhelming stress or pain was what?

He found all temperament types shut down the same way; what differed was how quickly each reached the point.

Where did a 2002 survey rank Pavlov among the most-cited psychologists of the 20th century?

Not bad for a man who dismissed psychology and insisted he was a physiologist.

With which assistant did Pavlov jointly develop the concept of the conditional reflex in 1901?

Tolochinov presented the results at a congress in Helsinki in 1903, before Pavlov's fuller account.

Which American published similar conditioning research in 1902, a year before Pavlov published his?

Twitmyer's knee-jerk experiments at Penn were largely ignored, and Pavlov got the credit.

Pavlov first noticed his dogs salivating at the mere presence of whom?

The dogs had learned that the person predicted the food, which became the seed of a whole science.

Pavlov's co-discoverer had his own term for the conditioning phenomenon. What was it?

He communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903.

In 1903 Pavlov explained his conditioning findings to a medical congress in which city?

His paper was titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.

Which 1932 dystopian novel makes Pavlovian conditioning a major theme?

Huxley's infants are conditioned with alarms and electric shocks to hate books and flowers.

Which 1973 Thomas Pynchon novel features Pavlovian conditioning as a major theme?

Its Pavlovian researcher, Pointsman, obsesses over the hero's mysterious response to V-2 rockets.

In 1994, A. Charles Catania cast doubt on whether Pavlov ever actually used which stimulus?

His writings record metronomes, tuning forks, whistles, shocks and visual cues; the popular image may owe more to Watson and Bekhterev.

Pavlov's wife Seraphima was known by which short name?

They met when she came to St. Petersburg to study at the Pedagogical Institute and married in 1881.

In which year did Pavlov marry Seraphima Karchevskaya?

The first nine years of the marriage were so poor that the couple sometimes lived apart just to find lodging.

Which Royal Society honour did Pavlov receive in 1915?

He had been elected a Foreign Member of the Society eight years earlier.

A crater named after Pavlov is found on which body?

The asteroid 1007 Pawlowia is also named for him.

In which year did Pavlov found the institute of physiology later named after him?

It was renamed the Pavlov Institute of Physiology after his death and belongs to the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Which British philosopher said Pavlov's methods "cover a very large field" with "quantitative exactitude"?

Russell nonetheless doubted the methods could be stretched to cover the whole of human behaviour.

In technical terms, the food in Pavlov's experiments was the what?

Its power to make a dog drool needed no learning, which is exactly what makes it unconditioned.

When a conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without food and the response fades, this is called what?

The learning is not erased: after a rest the response often reappears, weaker than before.

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response after a rest period is called what?

It is one of several phenomena showing that the procedure suppresses rather than deletes what was learned.

Pavlov's work became known in the West largely through which two American behaviourists?

Conditioning became the founding idea of behaviourism, the school that dominated mid-century psychology.

Pavlov's principles underpin which behaviour-therapy technique for reducing phobias?

Pairing a feared object with relaxation, step by step, is conditioning run in reverse.

Asked by E. M. Kreps whether he was religious, how did the seminary-trained Pavlov answer?

He said that, like most seminarians, he had become an unbeliever while still at school.

Which traditional Russian game did the young Pavlov love to play in his summer holidays?

Gorodki involves knocking wooden pin formations out of a square with a thrown bat; Tolstoy and Lenin played it too.

In 1908 Pavlov was elected an International Member of which American body?

The American Philosophical Society followed in 1932, four years before his death.

Which literary critic of the 1860s, alongside Sechenov, inspired Pavlov to abandon the seminary?

Pisarev was a natural-science advocate whose progressive ideas swept through Russian seminaries.

With which physiologist did Pavlov study in Leipzig during his 1884-86 stay in Germany?

He also worked in Rudolf Heidenhain's laboratories in Breslau, where digestion was studied in dogs.