Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 14, 1849 in the village of Ryazan, Russia, the son of Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov, who was the village priest. Like most other children from Ryazan, he went to the church school, and was later enrolled in a theological seminary. It was after reading The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin, and the works of Russian physiologist I. M. Sechenov that Pavlov decided to abandon his theological studies and become a man of science.  He left the seminary in favour of the University of St-Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Natural Sciences programme.

Pavlov realised his favourite subject was that of physiology, and it wasn’t long before he produced, in tandem with a fellow student, his first paper, a work on The Physiology of the Pancreatic Nerves for which he was awarded a gold medal.  Pavlov completed his course and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences, but he was not one to rest on his laurels, he went on to study at the Academy of Medical Surgery where he was awarded another gold medal and later on, a fellowship; in addition to this, Pavlov was also Director of the Physiological Laboratory at the clinic of S. P. Botkin, a famed Russian physician. It was there he produced his doctoral thesis on The Centrifugal Nerves of the Heart, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine/ physiology (1904).
1890 was an important year for Pavlov as he was asked to oversee the organisation and run the Department of Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. It was there he would conduct his most historically significant research, and also where he would remain for the rest of his life.  That same year, Pavlov was also appointed Professor of Pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy.
Pavlov’s main area of research throughout his scientific career was on the digestive process, which brought on a series of experiments exploring the correlation between the nervous system and the autonomic functions of the body.  Pavlov experimented with dogs, studying the relationship between salivation and digestion. By applying stimuli to the animals in a variety of ways, using sound, visual and tactile stimulation, he was able to make the animals salivate whether they were in the presence of food or not; a phenomenon he called the conditioned reflex.
Pavlov was also elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1901, the Nobel Prize in 1904. He was elected Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1907, given an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University in 1912, and awarded the Order of the Legion of Honour in 1915, the recommendation of the Medical Academy of Paris.
Dr. Ivan Pavlov died in Leningrad on February 27, 1936.
In addition to the many honours he received during his career, Pavlov should also be credited for the extraordinary impact his work, and that of his students and followers has had in the field of physiology.