Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first scholarly biography of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) in any language. Based upon a wealth of archival material, it weaves his life and science into some 100 years of Russian history and offers a fundamental reinterpretation of his scientific style and his famous research on conditional reflexes.
Trade ReviewA shining example of an academic biography. * Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History *
Well written, thoroughly researched and extremely readable, the cost represents good value for money and Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science deserves a place on all good library shelves. * Sue Howarth, The Biologist *
magisterial biography * London Review of Books *
David Todes has spent more then twenty years with his subject, and has evidently approached his task with the same dedication that Pavlov kept up through his many decades in the lab. Tode's sources range from the whimsical and self-revealing "journal" with which Pavlov wooed his future wife in 1879 to NKVD surveillance reports on his mood more than half a century later, from documents on the student Pavlov's very first research into nervous control of the organs to taped interviews with his co-workers several decades after his death. The result is history of science at its intricate best. * Stephen Lovell, The Times Literary Supplement *
Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science Science is an exceptional scientific biography, but it is also a vivid portrait of its time and place. Todes wears his exhaustive research lightly, never burdening the reader with unnecessary or undigested detail. Unlike Pavlov's dogs, teased and drained into a state of perpetual appetite, the reader is left fully sated. * Australian Book Review *
Well written, thoroughly researched and extremely readable... * Biologist *
Daniel P. Todes achieves a level of mastery that transforms biography into history... an exemplary work of scholarship * Science, Stephen T. Casper *
a colossal work of scholarship and imagination * Raymond Tallis, Book of the Year 2014, Times Literary Supplement *
Profoundly researched, densely detailed and likely to be definitive * Nature *
Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction ; PART ONE: The Seminarian Chooses Science (1849-1874) ; 1. The Pavlovs of Riazan' ; 2. Seminarian in the 'Sixties ; 3. St. Petersburg University ; PART TWO: Wilderness Years (1875-1890) ; 4. The Reluctant Physician ; 5. Serafima Vasil'evna Karchevskaia ; 6. Time of Troubles ; 7. In From the Cold ; PART THREE: Man of Tsarist Science (1891-1904) ; 8. A NonChekhovian Type ; 9. The Pavlovs of St. Petersburg ; 10. Professor of Physiology ; 11. The Physiology Factory: Forces of Production ; 12. The Physiology Factory: Relations of Production ; 13. Favorite Dogs ; 14. A Convincing Synthesis ; 15. Dacha Life ; 16. A European Reputation ; 17. Targeting the Psyche ; 18. The Nobel Prize ; PART FOUR: Nobelist in the Silver Age (1905-1914) ; 19. Amid Russia's Political Crisis ; 20. Family Life ; 21. Pavlov's Quest ; 22. The Factory Retooled ; 23. Battle of the Titans ; 24. Women Coworkers and the Physiology of Emotion ; 25. Mariia Kapitonovna Petrova ; PART FIVE: War and Revolution (1914-1921) ; 26. War ; 27. Revolution ; 28. Cataclysm ; 29. Where Are You, Freedom? ; 30. To Leave My Homeland ; PART SIX: Prosperous Dissident (1922-1929) ; 31. The Pavlovs of Leningrad ; 32. A Great Journey ; 33. Laboratory Revival ; 34. Lecturing the Bolsheviks and Leaving the Academy ; 35. The Commissar and the Dialectician ; 36. Freud, the Flood, and the Physiology of Personality ; 37. Two Books and a Beast ; 38. Types, Temperament, and Character ; 39. Work and Play in City and Countryside ; 40. On the Eve of the Great Break ; PART SEVEN: Icon of Soviet and World Science (1929-1936) ; 41. International Celebrity ; 42. Stalin Times ; 43. Pavlov's Communists ; 44. Koltushi: Pavlov's Science Village ; 45. Psychiatry ; 46. Gestalt Pavlov-Style ; 47. Year of Climaxes ; 48. At the Summit: The International Physiology Congress ; 49. Final Days ; Epilogue ; Glossary ; Bibliography
