Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов; September 26 [O.S. September 14] 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field.

Inspired when the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and decided to devote his life to science. In 1870 he enrolled in the physics and mathematics faculty at the University of Saint Petersburg to take the course in natural science.