|
The father of the would-be scientific luminary, Pyotr Dmitrievich Pavlov,
was a village priest in a backwater parish in Ryazan. Truthful and independent-minded,
he was often at loggerheads with his superiors and was by no means a rich Obtaining elementary education, Ivan Pavlov entered a seminary only to drop out shortly after to concentrate fully on scientific studies which he continued enrolling in the physics and physiology department of St. Petersburg University. From there he headed to Germany to engage in independent research in physiology, the science that eventually earned him world acclaim as one of the main authors of the unconditional reflexes theory. It was Pavlov who carried out the revolutionary experiment with the hungry dog that reacted to the sound of a bell it associated with food. For this research Pavlov became one of the first Russian scientists to be awarded the Nobel Prize which he received in 1904. Let’s move back a little, however. In 1881 Ivan Pavlov got married but the newlyweds were too poor to rent a flat and so they spent some time living with Ivan’s brother, Dmitry. Once, during one of their customary spats, when Ivan would make fun of the downsides of bachelor life and Dmitry parried deploring the hardships of married existence, Dmitry ordered his dog to “fetch the shoe Ivan’s wife beats Ivan with”. The dog obediently ran out into the adjoining room and returned holding a shoe in its mouth much to everyone’s amusement. Ivan’s defeat in that friendly spat was too obvious to ignore and it soured their relations for many years to come… In 1922, dogged by endemic lack of funds that threatened to his further scientific effort, Ivan Pavlov asked the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to allow him to move his laboratory abroad. Lenin said ‘no’ adding that Soviet Russia needed scientists of Pavlov’s caliber. Pavlov was issued a food ration commensurate with what the Soviet leaders were getting at the time. Pavlov said he would take it only if the same ration was made available to every of his laboratory staff. The following year Pavlov traveled to the United States and returning home he denounced Communism and the ideas expounded by Karl Marx. “For the kind of social experiment that you are making, I would not sacrifice a frog’s hind legs!” Pavlov said. When in 1924 they started expelling the sons of priests and nobility from the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Ivan Pavlov gave up his honorary membership of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. “I also am a son of a priest and if you expel the others, I will go too!” he said. Three years later, in 1927, distressed that his was the only negative vote in the Academy of Sciences against the newly recommended "red professors," he wrote to Joseph Stalin, protesting that "On account of what you are doing to the Russian intelligentsia - demoralizing, annihilating, depraving them - I am ashamed to be called a Russian!" In the late 1920s, as an anti-Communist gesture, he refused Nikolai Bukharin, the Soviet commissar of education, admission to his laboratory, though the laboratory was supported by government funds administered by Bukharin. All because by the time the revolution happened, Pavlov was already 66 years old and could see and understand what other people did not. “Everything that is happening here is an experiment and a very expensive one at that because is destroying everything that is good and beautiful in life. Please have mercy on our Motherland and us all.” That’s what the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov said seeing what had come out of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. During the last two years of his life, Pavlov gradually ceased these excoriations and this change of heart may have been a result of increased government support of science. Ivan Pavlov’s death in 1936, at the age of 86, came as a complete surprise
to everybody. Despite his advanced age, Pavlov was physically fit, bubbling
with energy and full of plans. However, shortly before his passing, Pavlov
was worried about sometimes forgetting the right words and moving uncontrollably.
His brilliant mind flickered one last time: “Wait a minute, but it’s a
swelling of the cerebral cortex!” Pavlov said. Later, an autopsy proved
him absolutely right. Just like the fact that the blood vessels if Pavlov’s
brain were only slightly affected by sclerosis…
|
man.
Pyotr Pavlov was extremely driven and healthy too with a penchant for home
gardening which for many years helped the money-strapped family to carry
on. Ivan’s mother also came from the clergy. Once a healthy and joyful
young woman, had lost much of her natural energy and zeal to giving birth
to her ten children, some of whom died early on. What she lacked in formal
education, she amply made up for with her natural wits and workaholic attitude
– traits that helped her bring up her children.
