Ivan Sechenov

Ivan Mikhaylovich Sechenov (1829 to 1905) was a Russian physiologist, medical scientist and psychologist whom Ivan Pavlov called the "Father of Russian physiology and scientific psychology". Born in the village of Tepli Stan, he trained first at the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School and then took up medicine at Moscow University, finishing his M.D. in 1856. He went on to study in Europe with Johannes Müller, Emil du Bois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz, Carl Ludwig and Claude Bernard, among others. Among his discoveries was the cerebral inhibition of spinal reflexes, and his book Reflexes of the Brain brought electrophysiology into neurophysiology and medical teaching. He is counted among the originators of objective psychology for trying to bring objective experimental methods into Russian psychology, and he influenced Pavlov and later Russian psychologists. He often came into conflict with the tsarist government, which in 1866 accused him of spreading materialism.