Birth of Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov was born on 26 September 1849 in Ryazan. A Russian physiologist, Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his research on the digestive system. While studying digestion in dogs he noticed that the animals began to salivate at stimuli associated with feeding, and he developed this into the study of conditioned reflexes, which became a foundation of behaviorism and learning theory. Although he distrusted the Soviet regime in some respects, he was given generous support for his laboratories. His name has become shorthand in popular culture for automatic responses to learned cues.

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