April 23, 1903: Ivan Pavlov delivers a research paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals. In it, he discusses what he calls "the conditional reflex," what came to be known as "conditioned reflex." It makes him a legend of psychology.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was born on September 26, 1849 in Ryazan, in Central Russia. From his childhood days, Pavlov demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with what he referred to as "the instinct for research."
He attended the Ryazan church school before entering the local theological seminary. Inspired by the progressive ideas which Dmitry Pisarev, a Russian literary critic of the 1860s, and Ivan Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career without graduating and devoted his life to science.
Pavlov developed his "conditional reflex" with his assistant Ivan Tolochinov, in 1901. Edwin B. Tiwmyer, of the University of Pennsylvania, published similar research in 1902, a year before Pavlov published his.
The concept was developed after observing the rates of salivation in dogs. Pavlov noticed that his dogs began to salivate in the presence of the technician who normally fed them, rather than simply salivating in the presence of the food. If a buzzer or metronome was sounded before the food was given, the dog would later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of the sound stimulus alone.
Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been "reflex at a distance," communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki, Finland in 1903. Later the same year, Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, Spain, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.
Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, and the idea of "conditioning", as an automatic form of learning, became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it, behaviorism.
Pavlov's work with classical conditioning was of huge influence on how humans perceived themselves, their behavior and learning processes; his studies of classical conditioning continue to be central to modern behavior therapy.
Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, his work was praised by Vladimir Lenin, and the Communist Party supported his work. The support was not mutual, and he seeing the purges of, among others, intellectuals, he wrote to Joseph Stalin, saying he was ashamed to be a Russian. Stalin took no action against him, and he received a grand funeral following his death on February 27, 1936, from pneumonia at the age of 86.
To this day, someone who wants something very badly is sometimes described as "salivating like Pavlov's dogs."
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April 23, 1903 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Highlanders beat the Washington Senators, 7-2 at National Park in Washington. (Not to be confused with the Nationals Park that opened in 2008.) Willie Keeler went 1-for-5 for the Highlanders, who officially became the New York Yankees in 1913.
* The New York Giants lost to the Boston Beaneaters, 2-0 at the 1890-1911 version of the Polo Grounds. Charles "Togie" Pittinger pitched a 6-hit shutout. The Beaneaters went through some name changes until 1912, when they became the Boston Braves.
* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911.
* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Americans, 7-4 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. The Americans became the Red Sox in 1908.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-4 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Jimmy Sebring hit 2 home runs.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps, 6-5 at at Bennett Park in Detroit. The Cleveland team was named for its manager and 2nd baseman, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, who went 2-for-4 on this day. They became the Cleveland Indians in 1915, and the Cleveland Guardians in 2022.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-3 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago.
* And the Chicago White Sox, beat the St. Louis Browns, 4-3 in 10 innings at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
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