Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829 - 1905)

Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov

Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (Russian: Иван Михайлович Сеченов) was a Russian natural scientist, psychologist and physiologist, teacher and educator.

Ivan Mikhailovich was born into an impoverished noble family in the village of Teply Stan, Kurmysh uyezd, Simbirsk province (now the village of Sechenovo, Nizhny Novgorod region), graduated from the Main Military Engineering School, then from the Medical Faculty of Moscow University. For three and a half years Sechenov studied in Germany, engaged not only in biological disciplines, but also in physics and analytical chemistry. Abroad he became friends with S. P. Botkin, D. I. Mendeleev, A. P. Borodin, and the artist A. Ivanov.

In 1860 in St. Petersburg at the Imperial Academy of Medicine and Surgery Sechenov defended his dissertation on "Materials for the Physiology of Alcoholic Intoxication" and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Soon he received the post of extraordinary professor at this academy and organized one of the first physiological laboratories in Russia in his department. His record includes work in the laboratory of D. I. Mendeleev, head of the Department of Physiology at Odessa Novorossiysk University, teaching at St. Petersburg University, and professor in the Department of Physiology at Moscow University. Sechenov gave much effort to the development of women's education. He participated in the organization and work of the Higher Women's Courses in the capital, taught at women's courses at the Society of Educators and Teachers in Moscow.

Ivan Sechenov is the founder of the doctrine of mental regulation of behavior, the creator of the first physiological scientific school in Russia. For the first time in history he substantiated the reflex nature of conscious and unconscious activity. He showed that the basis of mental phenomena is physiological processes, substantiated the importance of metabolic processes in the realization of the body's reactions to stimuli. He laid the foundations of physiology of labor, age, comparative and evolutionary physiology. He studied the respiratory function of blood.

Sechenov's main works: "Reflexes of the brain" (1863), "Physiology of the nervous system" (1866), "Elements of thought" (1878), "Sketch of human working movements" (1901), etc. In addition, Sechenov edited "The physiology of the nervous system" (1866). In addition, Sechenov edited translations of books by foreign scientists. Thus, in 1871-1872 under his editorship in Russia was published a translation of Charles Darwin's work "The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection". Among his students were Ilya Mechnikov, Ivan Pavlov, Kliment Timiryazev, Nikolai Vvedensky, and Ivan Tarkhanov, who became famous scientists.