“Without Ivanov Mikhailovich, with their sense of dignity and duty, any state is doomed to destruction from within, regardless of any Dneprostroy and Volkhovstroy. Because the state should not consist of machines, not of bees and ants, but of representatives of the highest species of the animal kingdom, Homo sapiens.
The first Russian Nobel laureate, Academician I.P. Pavlov.
Ivan Sechenov was born on August 13, 1829 into a noble family in the village of Teply Stan, located in the Simbirsk province (today the village of Sechenovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region). His father's name was Mikhail Alekseevich, and he was a military man. Sechenov Sr. served in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment and retired with the rank of second major. Ivan's mother, Anisya Yegorovna, was an ordinary peasant woman who freed herself from serfdom after she married her master. In his memoirs, Sechenov wrote with love: “My smart, kind, sweet mother was beautiful in her youth, although according to legend, there was an admixture of Kalmyk blood in her blood. Of all the children, I went into the black relatives of my mother and from her acquired that appearance, thanks to which Mechnikov, who returned from a trip to the Nogai steppe, told me that in these Palestines, that neither a Tatar, the spitting image of Sechenov ... "
The village of Teply Stan, in which Vanya spent his childhood, belonged to two landowners - the western part of it was the property of Pyotr Filatov, and the eastern part - Mikhail Alekseevich. The Sechenovs had a solid two-story house in which the whole large family lived - Ivan had four brothers and three sisters. The head of the family supported his children with difficulty - he had no capital, and the income from the estate was small. Despite this, Mikhail Alekseevich perfectly understood the importance of education and considered it his duty to give it to children. However, when the time came to send Ivan to the Kazan gymnasium already assigned to him, Sechenov Sr. died. After the death of his father, Vanya had to say goodbye to the thoughts of the gymnasium. At the same time, his older brother returned to the village from Moscow. It was he who told mother that education in St. people studied engineering and mathematics in detail), and the profession of a military engineer is considered prestigious. This story made a proper impression on Anisya Yegorovna, and soon Vanya was sent to the Northern capital.
In mid-August 1843, Ivan Mikhailovich was admitted to the Main Military Engineering School, where other famous Russian people also studied - the hero of Sevastopol, General Eduard Totleben, writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dmitry Grigorovich. After studying in the lower classes for five years, Sechenov failed the exams in building art and fortification, and therefore, instead of being transferred to the officer class in June 1848, with the rank of ensign, he was sent to serve in the second engineer battalion stationed in the city of Kyiv. The military service could not satisfy Sechenov's inquisitive nature, and, having served in the sapper battalion for less than two years, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to retire. In January 1850, with the rank of second lieutenant, he retired from military service, and already in October he signed up as a volunteer at the medical faculty of Moscow University.
Orders at the metropolitan university at that time were incredibly strict. For a student, going out into the street without a sword or a cap worn instead of a cocked hat was considered a serious misconduct. In addition to their superiors, it was required to salute all the military generals they met. "Disorder" in uniform was also severely punished. For this, by the way, the subsequently known doctor Sergei Botkin suffered - for the collar of his uniform that was not fastened with hooks, he was put in a cold punishment cell for a day. Ivan Mikhailovich himself in his student years lived extremely modestly, renting tiny rooms. The money that his mother sent him was barely enough for food, and besides, it was necessary to make money for education. The first lecture Ivan Mikhailovich listened to at the university was on anatomy. The gray-haired professor read it in Latin, which Sechenov did not know at that moment, however, thanks to diligence and his outstanding abilities, he quickly learned it. In general, a diligent and thoughtful student, Sechenov studied very diligently at first. In his own words, in his junior years he dreamed of devoting himself to comparative anatomy. This discipline was taught by the famous professor Ivan Glebov. Sechenov liked his lectures and eagerly attended Ivan Timofeevich's classes.
After several years of study, Ivan Mikhailovich began to study therapy and general pathology, which was read by Professor Alexei Polunin, the then medical luminary, the founder of the country's first department of pathological anatomy. However, having familiarized himself with the main medical subjects closer, the young man suddenly became disillusioned with medicine. Subsequently, he wrote: “The fault of the betrayal of my medicine was that I did not find in it what I expected - naked empiricism instead of theories ... There is nothing but a list of the symptoms of the disease and the causes of the disease, methods of treatment and its outcomes. And there is no information about how the disease develops from the causes, what is its essence and why this or that medicine helps ... The diseases themselves did not give rise to the slightest interest in me, since there were no keys to understanding their meaning ... ". For clarification, Sechenov turned to Alexei Polunin, who answered him this way: “Dear sir, would you like to jump above your head? .. Young man, generally speaking, learn that knowledge does not only come from books - they are obtained by practical means. If you heal, you will make mistakes. And when you go through this complex science with your patients, then you can be called a doctor.
It is possible that Ivan Mikhailovich would have left medicine as easily as he said goodbye to military service if he had not met the outstanding surgeon Fyodor Inozemtsev. The professor's fascination with the role of the sympathetic nervous system in the development of many diseases, his striking foresight of the importance of the nervous system in the study of diseases aroused great interest in the young man. On the basis of the works of Fedor Ivanovich, Sechenov's first scientific article, "Can Nerves Influence Nutrition," appeared.
In 1855, when Ivan Mikhailovich had already entered the fourth year, his mother died unexpectedly. After the death of Anisya Egorovna, the sons divided the inheritance. Sechenov immediately renounced the rights to the estate and asked for money. Several thousand rubles fell to his share, and the only "property" received by Ivan Mikhailovich as property was the serf servant Feofan, to whom the future scientist immediately procured a free one.
Sechenov graduated from the course at the capital's university among the three most capable students and was forced to take not the standard medical, but much more difficult, doctoral final exams. After their defense in June 1856, he received a certificate of confirmation in the degree of a doctor "with the right to receive a doctorate in medicine after defending a dissertation." Ivan Mikhailovich himself, after passing the exams, was finally convinced that medicine was not his vocation, choosing physiology as a new direction of his activity. Since this young science was at a higher level abroad, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to leave his homeland for a while.
Sechenov decided to start his studies with chemistry and chose the city of Berlin as his first stop. The laboratory of medicinal chemistry there was headed by a young and talented scientist, Felix Goppe-Seyler. Together with him, Sechenov studied the chemical composition of the fluids entering the bodies of animals. During this internship, he discovered a significant error in the works of the famous French physiologist Claude Bernard. The publication of data on this brought fame to the young physiologist among European colleagues.
Even in his student years, young Sechenov was a permanent member of the literary circle of Apollon Grigoriev. In addition to poetry readings, this circle was famous for its unbridled revels, in which the "father of Russian physiology" took an active part. For Ivan Mikhailovich, in the end, participation in these drinking bouts was not in vain - while already in Berlin, he had a plan to investigate the effect of alcohol poisoning on the human body. Scientific coverage of acute alcohol poisoning later became the basis of his doctoral dissertation. Sechenov carried out all studies in two versions - with the use of alcohol and under normal conditions. The young scientist studied the effect of alcoholic beverages on nerves and muscles on animals (in particular, frogs) and on himself.
In the winter of 1856, Ivan Mikhailovich listened to a series of lectures from the German physiologist Emil Dubois-Reymond on electrophysiology, a new field of study that studies physiological processes by changing the electrical potentials that arise in the tissues and organs of the body. The audience of this most prominent scientist was small, only seven people, and among them a couple of Russians - Botkin and Sechenov. In addition, during the year of his stay in Berlin, Ivan Mikhailovich attended lectures by Rose on analytical chemistry, Johannes Müller on comparative anatomy, and Magnus on physics. And in the spring of 1858, Sechenov went to Vienna and got a job with the famous physiologist of those years - Professor Karl Ludwig, known for his work on blood circulation. According to Sechenov, Ludwig was "an international luminary of physiology for young scientists from all over the world, which was facilitated by his pedagogical skills and wealth of knowledge." In his laboratory, the Russian scientist continued his research on the effect of alcohol on blood circulation. All the summer of 1858, Ivan Mikhailovich was only engaged in pumping out gases from the blood. However, all the methods for this that scientists used at that time were unsatisfactory, and after much searching and thinking, the twenty-nine-year-old Russian scientist managed to construct a new absorptive meter, which remained in the name "Sechenov's pump".
The next point of study for Ivan Mikhailovich was Heidelberg University, where professors Hermann Helmholtz and Robert Bunsen, popular in Europe, taught. In the laboratory of Helmholtz, Sechenov conducted four important scientific studies - the effect of stimulation of the vagus nerve on the heart, the study of the speed of contractions of the frog muscles, the study of physiological optics and the study of the gases contained in milk. Sechenov took a course in inorganic chemistry from the chemist Bunsen. The memory left by Ivan Mikhailovich about his new teacher is curious: “Bunsen lectured excellently and had the habit of sniffing all the described odorous substances in front of the audience, no matter how bad and harmful the smells were. There were stories that once he sniffed something until he fainted. For his weakness for explosives, he had long ago paid with his eye, but at his lectures he made explosions at every opportunity, and then solemnly showed the remnants of the last connection on the broken bottom ... Bunsen was a universal favorite, and young people called him "Papa Bunsen" despite the fact that he was not yet an old man.
Having visited Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig and Heidelberg, Ivan Mikhailovich fully completed the program, which he compiled for himself with the aim of comprehensive and deep mastering of experimental physiology. The result of these works was the completion of work on a doctoral dissertation, which was sent to St. Petersburg to the Medical and Surgical Academy, where her defense was to take place. This work, modestly named by the author "Materials for the Physiology of Alcohol Poisoning", stood out for its deep scientific insight into the essence of the topic, the wealth of experimental data, and the breadth of the problem. In February 1860, Sechenov's dissertation was published in the Military Medical Journal.
On a February evening in 1860, Ivan Mikhailovich arrived at home in a post stagecoach. In early March, he successfully defended his dissertation and became a doctor of medicine. At the same time, the Council of the Medico-Surgical Academy admitted him to the exams for the right to acquire the title of adjunct professor. Having passed these exams, Sechenov received an offer to teach physiology classes, and after a couple of weeks he gave his first lecture. Already the first speeches of the thirty-year-old professor attracted general interest. His reports were distinguished not only by clarity and simplicity of presentation, but also by richness of facts, as well as unusual content. One of his assistants wrote: “And now, many years later, I must say that never before or later in my life have I met a lecturer with such talent. He had excellent diction, but the power of logic in his reasoning was especially shocking ... ". In mid-April, Ivan Mikhailovich was enrolled as an adjunct professor in the department of physiology, and in March 1861 he was unanimously elected by the conference of the Medical-Surgical Academy as an extraordinary professor (that is, not occupying the department or supernumerary).
In September 1861, the scientist's public lectures "On Plant Acts in Animal Life" were published in the Medical Bulletin. In them, Sechenov for the first time formulated the concept of the relationship of organisms with the environment. And in the summer of the following year, Ivan Mikhailovich again went abroad for a year and worked in the Paris laboratory of the famous Claude Bernard, the founder of endocrinology. There he managed to discover the nervous mechanisms of "central (or Sechenov's) inhibition." This work, highly appreciated by Claude Bernard, Ivan Mikhailovich subsequently dedicated to the German researcher Karl Ludwig with the words: "To his highly respected teacher and friend." He also did not stop improving his education - on the same trip, Sechenov managed to attend a course on thermometry at the famous College de France.
In the autumn of 1861, the scientist met Maria Bokova and her friend Nadezhda Suslova. Young women passionately wanted to become certified doctors, but they could not get into the university - in Russia at that time the path to higher education for the fairer sex was closed. Then Suslova and Bokova, despite the difficulties, decided to attend lectures at the Medico-Surgical Academy as volunteers. Ivan Mikhailovich eagerly helped them in the study of medicine. At the end of the academic year, he offered his students various topics for scientific research, subsequently Maria Alexandrovna and Nadezhda Prokofievna not only wrote doctoral dissertations, but also successfully defended them in Zurich. Nadezhda Suslova became the first Russian female doctor, and Maria Bokova became Sechenov's wife and his indispensable assistant in scientific research.
In May 1863, Ivan Mikhailovich returned to St. Petersburg and published his latest works in print - essays on "animal" electricity. These works of Sechenov made a lot of noise, and in mid-June the Academy of Sciences awarded him the Demidov Prize. Ivan Mikhailovich himself all summer long was engaged in the creation of his famous scientific work called "Reflexes of the Brain", which Academician Pavlov dubbed "the ingenious stroke of Sechenov's thought." In this work, the scientist convincingly proved for the first time that the entire mental life of people, all their behavior is firmly connected with external stimuli, "and not with some mysterious soul." Any irritation, according to Sechenov, causes one or another response of the nervous system - a reflex in a different way. Ivan Mikhailovich experimentally showed that if a dog's eyesight, hearing and sense of smell are "turned off", then he will sleep all the time, because no stimulus signals will come to his brain from the outside world.
This work of the scientist tore off the veil of mystery that surrounded the mental life of a person. Joy, sadness, mockery, passion, animation - all these phenomena of the life of the brain, according to Sechenov, were expressed as a result of less or more relaxation or shortening of a certain group of muscles - a purely mechanical act. Of course, such conclusions gave rise to a storm of protest in society. A certain censor Veselovsky in a memorandum noted that Sechenov's works "undermine the political and moral principles, as well as the religious beliefs of people." Privy Councilor Przhetslavsky (by the way, the second censor of the Ministry of the Interior) accused Ivan Mikhailovich of degrading a person “to the state of a pure machine”, debunking “all moral social foundations and destroying the religious dogmas of the future life.” Already in early October 1863, the Minister of the Interior forbade the publication in the journal Sovremennik of the scientist's work entitled "Attempts to Introduce Physiological Principles into Mental Processes." However, this essay, under the changed title "Reflexes of the Brain", was published in the Medical Bulletin.
In April 1864, Sechenov was approved as an ordinary professor of physiology, and two years later Ivan Mikhailovich decided to publish the main work of his life as a separate book. On this occasion, the Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Valuev informed Prince Urusov, the head of the Ministry of Justice: which recognizes in man only one matter. I recognize Sechenov's work as undeniably harmful. The circulation of the book was under arrest, and the materialistic views of the scientist caused a new wave of persecution by the authorities. Sechenov received the news of the initiation of a lawsuit against him extremely calmly. To all the offers of friends for help in finding a good lawyer, Ivan Mikhailovich answered: “And why do I need him? I will bring an ordinary frog with me to court and do all my experiments in front of the judges - then let the prosecutor refute me. Fearing to disgrace not only before the whole of Russian society, but also before scientific Europe, the government decided to abandon the trial and, reluctantly, allowed the book "Reflexes of the Brain" to be published. At the end of August 1867, the arrest from its publication was lifted, and Sechenov's work saw the light. However, the great physiologist - the pride and beauty of Russia - remained "politically unreliable" for the tsarist government for the rest of his life.
In 1867-1868 Ivan Mikhailovich worked in the Austrian town of Graz, in the scientific laboratory of his friend Alexander Rollet. There he discovered the phenomena of trace and summation in the nerve centers of living organisms and wrote the work "On the chemical and electrical stimulation of the spinal nerves of frogs." In the Russian Academy of Sciences at that time there was not a single Russian name in the category of natural science, and at the end of 1869 Ivan Mikhailovich was elected a corresponding member of this scientific institution. And in December 1870, Sechenov voluntarily left the Medico-Surgical Academy. He committed this act as a protest against the balloting of his close friend Ilya Mechnikov, who was nominated for a professorship. Sechenov's departure marked the beginning of a whole "tradition" - over the next eighty years, the heads of the department of physiology left the academy under various circumstances, but always with resentment.
After leaving the department, Sechenov remained unemployed for some time, until an old friend and colleague Dmitry Mendeleev offered him a job in his laboratory. Sechenov accepted the offer and took up the chemistry of solutions, while lecturing at the artists' club. In March 1871 he received an invitation from the Novorossiysk University and until 1876 he worked in Odessa as a professor of physiology. During these years, Ivan Mikhailovich, without ceasing to study the physiology of the nervous system, made major discoveries in the field of absorption from tissues and release of carbon dioxide by the blood. Also during these years, Ivan Mikhailovich discovered the mechanism of muscular feeling (otherwise proprioception), which allows people to realize the position of their bodies even with their eyes closed. The English scientist Charles Sherrington, who made a similar discovery, always recognized the priority of Ivan Mikhailovich, but only he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1932, since Sechenov had already died by that time.
In the eighties of the nineteenth century, the name of Sechenov was no less popular in the scientific world than in the literary world - the name of Chernyshevsky. However, it was no less "popular" in the top government. In November 1873, according to the proposal of six academicians, Ivan Mikhailovich ran for an associate degree in physiology at the Academy of Sciences. The huge list of discoveries and works of the scientist was so impressive, and the academicians who nominated him were so authoritative that at the meeting of the department he was elected by 14 votes against 7. However, a month later the general meeting of the Academy of Sciences was held, and Ivan Mikhailovich lost two votes - these two votes were the privilege of the president Academy. This is how the doors of this institution closed before the great Russian scientist, just as they closed for Stoletov, Mendeleev, Lebedev, Timiryazev, Mechnikov - world-famous scientists, the best representatives of Russian science. There was nothing surprising, by the way, in the non-election of Ivan Mikhailovich. From the point of view of most academicians, the physiologist who wrote "Reflexes of the Brain", propagandizing right and left "the English revolutionary Darwin", a seditious and materialist, could not count on being in the circle of "immortals".
In the spring of 1876, Sechenov returned to the city on the Neva and took the place of professor in the department of physiology, histology and anatomy of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. In this place in 1888 the scientist organized a separate laboratory of physiology. Along with his work at the university, Sechenov lectured at the Bestuzhev Higher Women's Courses - one of the founders of which he was. In the new place, Ivan Mikhailovich, as always, launched advanced physiological research. By that time, in general terms, he had already completed work on the physicochemical laws of the distribution of gases in artificial salt solutions and blood, and in 1889 he managed to derive the "Sechenov equation" - an empirical formula relating the solubility of a gas in an electrolytic solution with its concentration and laid the foundation for the study of human gas exchange.
It should be noted that Ivan Mikhailovich, being an unusually versatile person, was interested in all aspects of social and scientific life. Among his closest acquaintances were such famous personalities as Ivan Turgenev, Vasily Klyuchevsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is curious that contemporaries considered Ivan Mikhailovich the prototype of Bazarov in the novel "Fathers and Sons" and Kirsanov in the novel "What is to be done?". Sechenov’s friend and student, Kliment Timiryazev, wrote about him: “Hardly any modern physiologist has such a wide scope in the field of his research, starting with research in the field of gas dissolution and ending with research in the field of nervous physiology and strictly scientific psychology ... If we add to this the remarkably simple form in which he clothes his ideas, it will become clear the enormous influence that Sechenov had on Russian thought, on Russian science far beyond the limits of his specialty and his audience. By the way, as a scientist, Ivan Mikhailovich was unusually lucky. Each new work has always endowed him with a significant and important discovery, and the physiologist generously put these gifts into the treasury of world science. Sechenov, who received an excellent physical, mathematical and engineering education, effectively applied knowledge in his scientific activities, using, among other things, such approaches that were later called cybernetics. In addition, the scientist prepared (although not published) a course in higher mathematics. According to Academician Krylov, “of all biologists, only Helmholtz (by the way, a prominent physicist) knew mathematics as well as Sechenov.”
Despite all the merits of the scientist, the authorities could hardly bear him, and in 1889 Ivan Mikhailovich was forced to leave St. Petersburg. The physiologist himself said with irony: "I decided to change my professorship to a more modest privat docent in Moscow." However, even there the scientist continued to put up obstacles and interfere with doing what he loved. Ivan Mikhailovich could not refuse his research work, and Karl Ludwig, who understood everything very well - at that moment a professor at the University of Leipzig - wrote to his student that as long as he was alive, there would always be a place in his laboratory for a Russian friend. Thus, in the laboratory of Ludwig Sechenov, he set up experiments and was engaged in physiological research, and in Moscow he only gave lectures. In addition, the scientist taught classes at women's courses at the Society of Teachers and Educators. This continued until 1891, until the professor of the Department of Physiology Sheremetevsky died, and a vacancy appeared at Moscow University. By that time, Ivan Mikhailovich had completely completed research on the theory of solutions, which, by the way, were highly appreciated in the scientific world and were confirmed by chemists in the coming years. After that, Sechenov took up gas exchange, constructing a number of original instruments and developing his own methods for studying the exchange of gases between tissues and blood and between the external environment and the body. Admitting that "the study of breathing on the go" has always been his impossible task, Sechenov began to study the gas exchange of the human body in dynamics. In addition, as in the old days, he paid great attention to neuromuscular physiology, publishing a generalizing capital work, Physiology of the Nerve Centers.
In everyday life, the famous physiologist was a modest man, content with very little. Even his closest friends did not know that Sechenov had such high awards as the Order of St. Stanislav of the first degree, the Order of St. Vladimir of the third degree, the Order of St. Anna of the third degree. Together with his wife, in his free time, he translated Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man into Russian and was a popularizer of evolutionary teaching in our country. It is also worth noting that the scientist was opposed to any experiments on living people. If he needed to conduct experiments on the human body during work, then Ivan Mikhailovich checked everything only on himself. To do this, he, a lover of rare wines, had to not only swallow undiluted alcohol, but once drink a flask with tubercle bacilli in order to prove that only a weakened body is susceptible to this infection. This direction, by the way, was later developed by his student Ilya Mechnikov. In addition, Sechenov did not recognize serfdom and, before his death, sent six thousand rubles to the peasants of his estate Tyoply Stan - this is the amount, according to his calculations, he spent on his education at the expense of his mother's serfs.
In December 1901, at the age of 72, Ivan Mikhailovich left teaching at Moscow University and retired. After leaving the service, Sechenov's life went in a quiet and peaceful way. He continued to conduct experimental work, and in 1903-1904 he even took up teaching for workers (Prechistina courses), but the authorities quickly imposed a ban on this. He lived with Mariy Alexandrovna (with whom he sealed his union with the sacrament of marriage as early as 1888) in Moscow in a clean and comfortable apartment. He had a small circle of acquaintances and friends who gathered with him for musical and card evenings. Meanwhile, the Russian-Japanese war broke out in the country - Port Arthur was surrendered, the tsarist army was defeated near Mukden, and almost the entire fleet sent to help from the Baltic Sea died in the battle of Tsushima. These days, Ivan Mikhailovich wrote in his memoirs: "... It's a misfortune to be a good-for-nothing old man in such a difficult time - to be tormented by anxious expectations and wringing useless hands ...". However, the scientist's hands were not useless. Soon after the tsarist officials forbade him to work at the Prechistensky courses, Ivan Mikhailovich prepared for publication his next work, which combined all the studies on the absorption of carbonic acid by saline solutions. And then the scientist began new research on the physiology of labor. Back in 1895, he published such a unique article for that time as "Criteria for setting the length of the working day", where he scientifically proved that the length of the working day should not be more than eight hours. Also in this work, such a concept as "active recreation" was first introduced.
A terrible disease for the elderly - lobar pneumonia - suddenly struck Sechenov in the fall of 1905. The premonition of an imminent death did not deceive the seventy-six-year-old scientist - on the morning of November 15, he lost consciousness, and around twelve at night Ivan Mikhailovich died. The great physiologist was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in a simple wooden coffin. A few years later, Sechenov's ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery. After himself, Sechenov left many students and a colossal legacy in the field of medicine and psychology. A monument was erected to Ivan Mikhailovich in his homeland, and in 1955 the name of Sechenov was given to the capital's medical institute. It is also worth noting that St. Luke Voyno-Yasenetsky in his writings emphasized that the theories of Sechenov and his follower Ivan Pavlov about the central nervous system are entirely consistent with Orthodox dogma.
Based on the materials of the book by M.I. Yanovskaya "Sechenov" and the site http://chtoby-pomnili.com/
Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (August 1, 1829 - November 2, 1905) - an outstanding Russian physiologist, encyclopedic scientist, psychologist, pathologist, anatomist, histologist, toxicologist, culturologist, anthropologist, naturalist, chemist, physical chemist, physicist, biochemist, evolutionist, instrument maker , military engineer, teacher, publicist, humanist, educator, philosopher and rationalist thinker, founder of the physiological school; Honored Ordinary Professor, Corresponding Member for Biological Discipline (1869-1904), Honorary Member (1904) of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Cavalier of the orders of St. Stanislaus, 1st class, St. Anna, 3rd class, St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir, 3rd class
Born on August 13, 1829 in the landlord family of the nobleman Mikhail Alekseevich Sechenov and his former serf Anisya Georgievna (“Egorovna”) in the village of Tepliy Stan, Kurmysh district, Simbirsk province (now the village of Sechenovo, Nizhny Novgorod region). “As a child,” he later recalled, “more than my father and mother, I loved my dear nanny. Nastasya Yakovlevna caressed me, took me for a walk, saved delicacies for me from dinner, took my side in squabbles with my sisters and captivated me most of all with fairy tales, for which she was a great craftswoman. Due to a lack of funds in a large family, he received only a home primary education under the guidance of a literacy for the first time at the order of the owner in a monastery just before her marriage, but an intelligent and active mother who considered mathematics, natural sciences, fluency in Russian and living foreign languages necessary, and dreamed of so that her, "one of the millions of slaves", the son became a professor.
He graduated from the Main Engineering School in 1848. He was not enrolled in the upper officer class; therefore, he could not "go through the scientific part." He was released with the rank of ensign. The request of I. M. Sechenov to enroll him in the army in the Caucasus was not satisfied, he was sent to the second reserve engineer battalion.
Two years later, Lieutenant Sechenov retired and entered the medical faculty of Moscow University as a volunteer. At the university, in addition to studying medicine, he also listened to the lectures of T. N. Granovsky and especially P. N. Kudryavtsev, which helped him become an expert in the field of cultural studies, pedagogy, philosophy, theology, deontology, ancient and medieval medicine, and history in general. Any scientific device, considering it, first of all, a subject of material culture, he called "history" all his life. In the 3rd year, he became interested in psychology, which was then considered a section of theology (in Orthodoxy), theology (in other confessions) and philosophy, and this, in his words, “Moscow passion for philosophy” later played an important role in his activities. It is curious that Professor Spassky M.F. taught a course in physics, and even though Sechenov himself considered this course elementary and according to Lenz's textbook, in our time Sechenov was considered as a student and follower of M.F. Spassky, although I.M. Sechenov, and M. F. Spassky were students of M. V. Ostrogradsky. Sechenov, who decided to devote himself to private and general pathology (anatomy and physiology), already before studying at the university, received a solid engineering and physical and mathematical education, listened to lectures by a formally tough opponent of clinical (that is, on patients) experiments, head of the department of pathological anatomy and pathological physiology "Medical star" Alexei Ivanovich Polunin, was infected with interest in topographic anatomy by the "most handsome professor" F.I. Inozemtsev, under whose guidance he began his scientific activity while still studying, and in comparative anatomy and physiology - Ivan Timofeevich Glebov. Sechenov began to dream about physiology, especially since in his senior years he became disillusioned with the empirical medical practice of that time, not based on scientific general pathology, experimental medical practice of that time, "learning from patients", which even Polunin considered natural, but, having a solid engineering and physical -mathematical education, felt that he could read physiology better than I.M. Sechenov’s favorite lecturer I.M. Sechenov, I.T. Having completed the full course of study at the insistence of Dean N.B. Anke with the right to receive a doctorate degree, Sechenov passed doctoral examinations instead of medical examinations and received the degree of doctor with honors. When he was in his 4th year, his mother suddenly died, and he decided to use the inheritance he received to fulfill his mother's dream. After successfully passing the exams in 1856, Sechenov went abroad at his own expense to study physiology. In 1856-1859 he worked in the laboratories of Johann Müller, E. Dubois-Reymond, F. Hoppe-Seyler in Berlin, Ernst Weber, O. Funke in Leipzig, K. Ludwig, with whom he had a particularly close friendship, in Vienna, recommendations of Ludwig - Robert Bunsen, Hermann Helmholtz in Heidelberg. In Berlin, he attended courses in physics by Magnus and analytical chemistry by Rose. To study the effect of alcohol on blood gases, Sechenov designed a new device - the "blood pump", which was highly appreciated by Ludwig and all modern scientists, and which was subsequently used by many physiologists. (The original Sechenov's "blood pump" in working condition is stored in the Museum of the Department of General Physiology of St. Petersburg University). Abroad, he was friends with A. N. Beketov, S. P. Botkin, D. I. Mendeleev, A. P. Borodin, the artist A. Ivanov, whom he assisted in working on the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. Perhaps, it was under the influence of the views of Ivanov and his friend N. V. Gogol that I. M. Sechenov’s determination to confirm the teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church about the bodily, in view of the unity of soul and body, resurrection at the second coming of Christ, was strengthened by the methods of natural science.
Abroad, Sechenov not only dispelled the ideas that existed even among the best German scientists about the “inability of the round-headed Russian race” to understand modern physiology, but also prepared a doctoral dissertation “Materials for the future physiology of alcohol intoxication”, one of the first in Russian, which he successfully defended in 1860 at the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, where by this time I. T. Glebov had been transferred by vice president. In the same year, at the invitation of I. T. Glebov, he began working at the department of physiology of this academy, where he soon organized a physiological laboratory - one of the first in Russia. For the course of lectures “On Animal Electricity” that amazed contemporaries at the Medico-Surgical Academy - even such people far from medicine as I. S. Turgenev and N. G. Chernyshevsky attended it - he was awarded the Demidov Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of 1862, he participated in the work of the Free University, then worked in Paris in the laboratory of the "father of endocrinology" Claude Bernard, this vacation was possibly associated with arrests among people of his circle in cases of proclamations "Great Russian" and "Bow to the lord peasants from their well-wishers ". In his classic work “Physiology of the Nervous System” of 1866, he formulated in detail his doctrine of self-regulation and feedback, further developed by the theory of automatic control and cybernetics, Sechenov studied the same problems during a year's vacation in 1867 - officially about the treatment of skin allergies , possibly related to the appeal to the Senate of the academician of the Medical-Surgical Academy Isidor with a request to exile Sechenov "for humility and correction" to the Solovetsky Monastery "for predacious soul-destructive and harmful teaching." He spent most of this vacation in Graz, in the laboratory of his Viennese friend, the physiologist and histologist Professor Alexander Rollet (1834-1903). While working at the Academy, he took part in organizing a research marine biological station in Sevastopol (now the A. O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine).
Having left the academy in 1870 in protest against the “discrimination of ladies” and the ballot recommended by him I. I. Mechnikov and A. E. Golubev, he worked in the chemical laboratory of D. I. Mendeleev at St. Petersburg University and lectured at the Artists Club. In 1871-1876 he headed the Department of Physiology at the Novorossiysk University in Odessa. In 1876-1888 he was a professor in the department of anatomy, histology and physiology of the Department of Zoology of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, where in 1888 he also organized a separate physiological laboratory. At the same time, he lectured at the Bestuzhev Higher Women's Courses, one of the founders of which he was. Later, he taught at the women's courses at the society of teachers and educators in Moscow. At first, under the influence of Charcot’s ideas, he mistakenly believed that I. M. Sechenov’s brilliant foresights that were centuries ahead of the level of development of science of his time were explained by the state of affect, but then he himself objected to the falsifications of I. M. Sechenov’s biography, Nobel Prize winner I. P. Pavlov considered impossible to understand it correctly without knowing what is described in "What to do?" events anticipated the novel by I. M. Sechenov. It should be noted that although N. G. Chernyshevsky wrote about eight prototypes, including two women, the main prototype of Rakhmetov’s “special person” was indeed the brother-in-law of I. M. Sechenov, a political prisoner, an exiled settler, in the future - a prominent military leader of tsarist Russia , Lieutenant General, retired, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Obruchev. But contrary to popular belief, despite the support of the women's movement, the friendship of families and the cooperation of the educators N. G. Chernyshevsky and I. M. Sechenov and the similarity of the biographies of the hero of the novel What Is To Be Done? doctors Kirsanov and I. M. Sechenov, Vera Pavlovna and wife I. M. Sechenov, who studied with him together with N. P. Suslova, later Doctor of Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics, ophthalmologist Maria Alexandrovna Bokova (nee Obrucheva - daughter of Lieutenant General Alexander Afanasyevich Obruchev), the novel was not based on real events in the life of I. M. Sechenov. As a subtle esthete, a theatergoer (a close acquaintance of I. M. Sechenov, playwright A. N. Ostrovsky even wrote the work “Actors according to Sechenov”, in which he anticipated some of Stanislavsky’s discoveries), a lover of Italian opera, a music lover and a musician who supported Ivanov, Antonina Nezhdanova, M. E. Pyatnitsky, he could not share the aesthetic theory of Chernyshevsky and could not be the prototype of the hero of the novel "Fathers and Sons" Bazarov. Rather, N. G. Chernyshevsky could consider him a prototype of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, and then N. G. Chernyshevsky’s choice of the name of the hero Alexander Kirsanov in the novel, which he considered the answer to “Fathers and Sons” by I. S. Turgenev, is understandable. I. M. Sechenov, as the creator of his own harmonious philosophy, could not share Chernyshevsky's metaphysics either. The opponent of any medical and social experiments on people, I. M. Sechenov, "like any great scientist, was a dissident" (quote from a letter from his relative Academician P. L. Kapitsa) from the point of view of both bureaucracy, and liberals, and "nihilists". In 1887, by a decree of the Tver diocesan court, the marriage of Maria and Peter Bokov was annulled, after which I. M. Sechenov and M. A. Bokova sealed their long-standing de facto union with the sacrament of the wedding. They turned the Obruchev family estate Klepenino into a model estate in Russia. Sechenov is not only the grandfather of Russian cybernetics, but also the cousin of the famous scientist in the field of cybernetics, computer technology, mathematical linguistics, the successor of research and teaching activities of I. M. Sechenov in the field of theoretical, mathematical and cybernetic biology, including the endocrine system, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences A. A. Lyapunov. A. A. Lyapunov actively participated in the fight against “Soviet creative Darwinism” (that is, in essence, anti-Darwinism, which claims that the example of plants and animals can be proved: all the acquired qualities of both the leaders of the party and the state, and the exploiters and enemies of the people are inherited by all descendants, regardless of upbringing and lifestyle, even if “the son is not responsible for the father”), which has nothing to do with I.P. Pavlov’s “Pavlovian physiology”, “Soviet nervism”, “the creation of a new man (in the camps)”, “Michurin biology”, occult teleology and vitalism, which were called “materialism” in the USSR and attributed to I. M. Sechenov and I. P. Pavlov. Formulated long before Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, I. M. Sechenov's teaching on the connection between ethics and the development of the national economy and that, in order to achieve true free will, lay people, like monks, must continuously work on themselves and strive for their individual the ideal of a knight or lady, has nothing to do with the "Order of the Sword" and the "creation of a new man" in the interpretation of Stalin. Even during the lifetime of I. M. Sechenov, who considered his works as a phenomenon of Russian literature idolized by him, just as the French consider Buffon one of the creators of the literary language, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin considered the most striking evidence of a decline in the mental level of attempts to somehow reflect clear filigree formulations of such an unsurpassed master of the word as I. M. Sechenov, even by means of music. But the official biographers of Sechenov in the USSR reformulated the essence of Sechenov’s works in the standard vein of propaganda newspaper clichés of the 1950s and attributed all his successes to the “party leadership of his scientific work”, ignoring his friendship with A. A. Grigoriev, I. S. Turgenev , V. O. Klyuchevsky, D. V. Grigorovich, F. M. Dostoevsky, the Botkin family, including the friend of Karl Marx V. P. Botkin - and they, and I. M. Sechenov, were never Marxists ( that is, supporters of the comprehensive irrational "dialectical materialism" of I. Dietzgen, which is fundamentally different from the rationalist "materialist dialectic" of Marx himself). Biographers of I.M. Sechenov, therefore, with the aim of organizing repressions against the academician of numerous relatives of I.M. serves as cybernetics”, who declared cybernetics a pseudoscience, and the scientific method of I. M. Sechenov - “a mechanism that turns into idealism”. I. M. Sechenov, who received a solid engineering and physical and mathematical education and effectively applied it in his scientific and pedagogical activities, of course, also used the approach that was later called cybernetics. He himself prepared, although he did not publish, a course in higher mathematics. According to Academician A. N. Krylov, of all biologists, only Helmholtz, also known as a great mathematician, could know mathematics as well as Sechenov. Sechenov’s student A.F. Samoilov recalled: “It seems to me that the appearance of Helmholtz - a physiologist, physiologist-philosopher and the appearance of I.M. Sechenov are close, related to each other both in the nature of the circle of thoughts that attracted and captured them, and in the ability to assert position of a sober natural scientist in areas where the speculation of philosophers has hitherto reigned. I. M. Sechenov - President of the First International Psychological Congress in Paris in 1889.
Since 1889 - assistant professor, since 1891 - professor of physiology at Moscow University. In 1901 he retired, but continued experimental work, as well as teaching at the Prechistensky courses for workers in 1903-1904. His friend, colleague and historian of science K. A. Timiryazev summarized: “Hardly any of his contemporary physiologists ... had such a wide scope in the field of his own research, starting with purely physical research in the field of gas dissolution and ending with research in the field of nervous physiology and strictly scientific psychology ... If we add to this the brilliant, remarkably simple, clear form in which he clothed his thoughts, then the wide influence that he had on Russian science, on Russian thought, even far beyond his audience and his specialty, becomes clear.
Works of a scientist
List of publications by Sechenov
"Reflexes of the Brain" - 1866
"Physiology of the nervous system" - 1866
"Elements of Thought" - 1879
"On the absorption of CO2 by solutions of salts and strong acids" - 1888
"Physiology of nerve centers" - 1891
"On alkalis of blood and lymph" - 1893
"Physiological criteria for setting the length of the working day" - 1895
"Instrument for fast and accurate analysis of gases" - 1896
"Portable breathing apparatus" - 1900, together with M. N. Shaternikov.
"Essay on the working movements of man" 1901
"Objective Thought and Reality" - 1902
"Autobiographical Notes" - 1904
Development of physiology
Several new knowledge was discovered by Sechenov. The final formation of Sechenov's physiological school dates back to 1863-1868. For a number of years he and his students studied the physiology of intercentral relations. The most significant results of these studies were published in his work "Physiology of the nervous system" (1866).
Sechenov translated a lot, edited translations of books by foreign scientists in the field of physiology, physics, medical chemistry, biology, history of science, pathology, and he radically revised works on physiology and pathology and supplemented them with the results of his own research. For example, in 1867, Ivan Mikhailovich's manual "Physiology of the Sense Organs" was published. Revised work "Anatomy und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane" von A. Fick. 1862-1864. Vision", and in 1871-1872, under his editorship, a translation of Charles Darwin's work "The Descent of Man" was published in Russia. The merits of I. M. Sechenov are not only the spread of Darwinism in Russia, where, for example, A. N. Beketov came to evolutionary ideas independently of Wallace and Darwin, but also the synthesis of physicochemical and evolutionary theories carried out by him for the first time in the world and the application of ideas Darwinism to the problems of physiology and psychology. I. M. Sechenov can rightly be considered a forerunner of the modern development of evolutionary physiology and evolutionary biochemistry in Russia.
The name of Sechenov is associated with the creation of the first All-Russian physiological scientific school, which was formed and developed at the Medico-Surgical Academy, Novorossiysk, St. Petersburg and Moscow Universities. At the Medical-Surgical Academy, independently of the Kazan School, Ivan Mikhailovich introduced the method of demonstrating an experiment into lecture practice. This contributed to the emergence of a close connection between the pedagogical process and research work and to a large extent predetermined Sechenov's success on the path of creating his own scientific school.
The physiological laboratory organized by the scientist at the Medico-Surgical Academy was the center of research in the field of not only physiology, but also pharmacology, toxicology and clinical medicine.
In the autumn of 1889, at Moscow University, the scientist gave a course of lectures on physiology, which became the basis of the generalizing work Physiology of the Nerve Centers (1891). In this work, an analysis of various nervous phenomena was carried out - from unconscious reactions in spinal animals to higher forms of perception in humans. The last part of this work is devoted to questions of experimental psychology. In 1894 he published "Physiological criteria for setting the length of the working day", and in 1901 - "Essay on the working movements of man." Of significant interest is also the work "Scientific activity of Russian universities in natural science over the past twenty-five years", written and published in 1883.
Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov. Born on August 1 (13), 1829 - died on November 2 (15), 1905. Russian physiologist and educator, publicist, rationalist thinker, founder of the physiological school, encyclopedic scientist, evolutionary biologist, psychologist, anthropologist, anatomist, histologist, pathologist, psychophysiologist, physical chemist, endocrinologist, ophthalmologist, hematologist, narcologist, hygienist, culturologist , instrument maker, military engineer.
He believed that Russians, just as the French consider Buffon one of the founders of their literary language, should also revere I. M. Sechenov as one of the founders of the modern Russian literary language.
Born on August 13, 1829 in the landlord family of the nobleman Mikhail Alekseevich Sechenov and his former serf Anisya Georgievna (“Egorovna”) in the village of Tepliy Stan, Kurmysh district, Simbirsk province (now the village of Sechenovo, Nizhny Novgorod region). "In childhood, he later recalled, more than my father and mother, I loved my dear nurse. Nastasya Yakovlevna caressed me, took me for a walk, saved delicacies for me from dinner, took my side in squabbles with the sisters and captivated me most of all with fairy tales, for which she was a great craftswoman.. Due to a lack of funds in a large family, he received only a home primary education under the guidance of a literacy for the first time at the order of the owner in a monastery just before her marriage, but an intelligent and active mother who considered mathematics, natural sciences, fluency in Russian and living foreign languages necessary, and dreamed of so that her, "one of the millions of slaves", the son became a professor.
He graduated from the Main Engineering School in 1848. He was not enrolled in the upper officer class; therefore, he could not "go through the scientific part." He was released with the rank of ensign. The request of I. M. Sechenov to enroll him in the army in the Caucasus was not satisfied, he was sent to the second reserve engineer battalion.
Two years later, Lieutenant Sechenov retired and entered the medical faculty of Moscow University as a volunteer. At the university, in addition to studying medicine, he also listened to the lectures of T. N. Granovsky and especially P. N. Kudryavtsev, which helped him become an expert in the field of cultural studies, stupidity, philosophy, theology, deontology, ancient and medieval medicine, history in general.
Any scientific device, considering it, first of all, a subject of material culture, he called "history" all his life. In the 3rd year, he became interested in psychology, which was then considered a section of theology (in Orthodoxy), theology (in other confessions) and philosophy, and this, in his words, “Moscow passion for philosophy” later played an important role in his activities. It is curious that Professor Spassky M.F. taught a course in physics, and even though Sechenov himself considered this course elementary and according to Lenz's textbook, in our time Sechenov was considered as a student and follower of M.F. Spassky, although I.M. Sechenov, and M. F. Spassky were students of M. V. Ostrogradsky. Sechenov, who decided to devote himself to private and general pathology (anatomy and physiology), already before studying at the university, received a solid engineering and physical and mathematical education, listened to lectures by a formally tough opponent of clinical (that is, on patients) experiments, head of the department of pathological anatomy and pathological physiology "Medical star" Alexei Ivanovich Polunin, was infected with interest in topographic anatomy by the "most handsome professor" F.I. Inozemtsev, under whose guidance he began his scientific activity while still studying, and in comparative anatomy and physiology - Ivan Timofeevich Glebov.
Sechenov began to dream about physiology, especially since in his senior years he became disillusioned with the empirical medical practice of that time, not based on scientific general pathology, experimental medical practice of that time, "learning from patients", which even Polunin considered natural, but, having a solid engineering and physical -mathematical education, felt that he could read physiology better than I.M. Sechenov’s favorite lecturer I.M. Sechenov, I.T. Having completed the full course of study at the insistence of Dean N.B. Anke with the right to receive a doctorate degree, Sechenov passed doctoral examinations instead of medical examinations and received the degree of doctor with honors. When he was in his 4th year, his mother suddenly died, and he decided to use the inheritance he received to fulfill his mother's dream. After successfully passing the exams in 1856, Sechenov went abroad at his own expense to study physiology.
In 1856-1859 he worked in the laboratories of Johann Müller, E. Dubois-Reymond, F. Hoppe-Seyler in Berlin, Ernst Weber, O. Funke in Leipzig, K. Ludwig, with whom he had a particularly close friendship, in Vienna, recommendations of Ludwig - Robert Bunsen, Hermann Helmholtz in Heidelberg.
In Berlin, he attended courses in physics by Magnus and analytical chemistry by Rose. To study the effect of alcohol on blood gases, Sechenov designed a new device - the "blood pump", which was highly appreciated by Ludwig and all modern scientists, and which was subsequently used by many physiologists. (The original Sechenov's "blood pump" in working condition is stored in the Museum of the Department of General Physiology of St. Petersburg University). Abroad, he was friends with A. N. Beketov, S. P. Botkin, A. P. Borodin, the artist A. Ivanov, whom he assisted in working on the painting “The Appearance of Christ to the People”. Perhaps it was under the influence of the views of Ivanov and his friend that the determination of I. M. Sechenov to confirm the teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church about the bodily, in view of the unity of soul and body, the resurrection at the second coming of Christ, was strengthened by the methods of natural science.
Abroad, Sechenov not only dispelled the ideas that existed even among the best German scientists about the “inability of the round-headed Russian race” to understand modern physiology, but also prepared a doctoral dissertation “Materials for the future physiology of alcohol intoxication”, one of the first in Russian, which he successfully defended in 1860 at the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, where by this time I. T. Glebov had been transferred by vice president. In the same year, at the invitation of I. T. Glebov, he began working at the department of physiology of this academy, where he soon organized a physiological laboratory - one of the first in Russia.
For the course of lectures “On Animal Electricity” that amazed contemporaries at the Medico-Surgical Academy - he was attended even by people as far from medicine as he was - he was awarded the Demidov Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. At the beginning of 1862, he participated in the work of the Free University, then worked in Paris in the laboratory of the "father of endocrinology" Claude Bernard, this vacation was possibly associated with arrests among people of his circle in cases of proclamations "Great Russian" and "Bow to the lord peasants from their well-wishers ". In his classic work “Physiology of the Nervous System” of 1866, he formulated in detail his doctrine of self-regulation and feedback, further developed by the theory of automatic control and cybernetics, Sechenov studied the same problems during a year's vacation in 1867 - officially about the treatment of skin allergies , possibly related to the appeal to the Senate of the academician of the Medical-Surgical Academy Isidor with a request to exile Sechenov "for humility and correction" to the Solovetsky Monastery "for predacious soul-destructive and harmful teaching." He spent most of this vacation in Graz, in the laboratory of his Viennese friend, the physiologist and histologist Professor Alexander Rollet (1834-1903). While working at the Academy, he took part in organizing a research marine biological station in Sevastopol (now the A. O. Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas).
Having left the academy in 1870 in protest against the “discrimination of ladies” and the ballot recommended by him I. I. Mechnikov and A. E. Golubev, he worked in the chemical laboratory of D. I. Mendeleev at St. Petersburg University and lectured at the Artists Club. In 1871-1876 he headed the Department of Physiology at the Novorossiysk University in Odessa. In 1876-1888 he was a professor in the department of anatomy, histology and physiology of the Department of Zoology of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, where in 1888 he also organized a separate physiological laboratory. At the same time, he lectured at the Bestuzhev Higher Women's Courses, one of the founders of which he was.
Later, he taught at the women's courses at the society of teachers and educators in Moscow. At first, under the influence of Charcot’s ideas, he mistakenly believed that I. M. Sechenov’s brilliant foresights that were centuries ahead of the level of development of science of his time were explained by the state of affect, but then he himself objected to the falsifications of I. M. Sechenov’s biography, Nobel Prize winner I. P. Pavlov considered impossible to understand it correctly without knowing what is described in "What to do?" events anticipated the novel by I. M. Sechenov. It should be noted that although N. G. Chernyshevsky wrote about eight prototypes, including two women, the main prototype of Rakhmetov’s “special person” was indeed the brother-in-law of I. M. Sechenov, a political prisoner, an exiled settler, in the future - a prominent military leader of tsarist Russia , Lieutenant General, retired, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Obruchev.
But contrary to popular belief, despite the support of the women's movement, the friendship of families and the cooperation of the educators N. G. Chernyshevsky and I. M. Sechenov and the similarity of the biographies of the hero of the novel What Is To Be Done? doctors Kirsanov and I. M. Sechenov, Vera Pavlovna and wife I. M. Sechenov, who studied with him together with N. P. Suslova, later Doctor of Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics, ophthalmologist Maria Alexandrovna Bokova (nee Obrucheva - daughter of Lieutenant General Alexander Afanasyevich Obruchev), the novel was not based on real events in the life of I. M. Sechenov. As a subtle esthete, a theatergoer (a close acquaintance of I. M. Sechenov, the playwright even wrote the work “Actors according to Sechenov”, in which he anticipated some of the discoveries of Stanislavsky), a lover of Italian opera, a music lover and a musician who supported Ivanov, Antonina Nezhdanova, M. E. Pyatnitsky , he could not share the aesthetic theory of Chernyshevsky and could not be the prototype of the hero of the novel "Fathers and Sons" by Bazarov. Rather, N. G. Chernyshevsky could consider him a prototype of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov, and then N. G. Chernyshevsky’s choice of the name of the hero Alexander Kirsanov in the novel, which he considered the answer to “Fathers and Sons” by I. S. Turgenev, is understandable. I. M. Sechenov, as the creator of his own harmonious philosophy, could not share Chernyshevsky's metaphysics either. Opponent of any medical and social experiments on people I. M. Sechenov “Like any great scientist, he was a dissident”(quote from a letter from his relative the academician) from the point of view of both bureaucracy, and liberals, and "nihilists".
In 1887, by a decree of the Tver diocesan court, the marriage of Maria and Peter Bokov was annulled, after which I. M. Sechenov and M. A. Bokova sealed their long-standing de facto union with the sacrament of the wedding. They turned the Obruchev family estate Klepenino into a model estate in Russia. Sechenov is not only the grandfather of Russian cybernetics, but also the cousin of the famous scientist in the field of cybernetics, computer technology, mathematical linguistics, the successor of research and teaching activities of I. M. Sechenov in the field of theoretical, mathematical and cybernetic biology, including the endocrine system, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences A. A. Lyapunov. A. A. Lyapunov actively participated in the fight against, largely based on Sechenov’s official biographies, which had nothing to do with the life and works of I. M. Sechenov, “Soviet creative Darwinism” (that is, in essence, anti-Darwinism, claiming that on the example of plants and animals, it can be proved that all the acquired qualities of both the leaders of the party and the state, and the exploiters and enemies of the people are inherited by all descendants, regardless of upbringing and lifestyle, even if “the son is not responsible for the father”), which has nothing to do with I P. Pavlov "Pavlovian physiology", "Soviet nervism", "creation of a new man (in the camps)", "Michurin biology", occult teleology and vitalism, which in the USSR were called "materialism" and attributed to I. M. Sechenov and I. P. Pavlov.
Formulated long before Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, I. M. Sechenov's teaching on the connection between ethics and the development of the national economy and that, in order to achieve true free will, lay people, like monks, must continuously work on themselves and strive for their individual the ideal of a knight or lady, has nothing to do with the "Order of the Sword" and the "creation of a new man" in the interpretation. However, Joseph Stalin in November 1941 named Sechenov among those who embody the spirit of the people.
Even during the lifetime of I. M. Sechenov, who considered his works as a phenomenon of Russian literature idolized by him, just as the French consider Buffon one of the creators of the literary language, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin considered the most striking evidence of a decline in the mental level of attempts to somehow reflect clear filigree formulations of such an unsurpassed master of the word as I. M. Sechenov, even by means of music. But the official biographers of Sechenov in the USSR reformulated the essence of Sechenov’s works in the standard vein of propaganda newspaper clichés of the 1950s and attributed all his successes to the “party leadership of his scientific work”, ignoring his friendship with A. A. Grigoriev, I. S. Turgenev , V. O. Klyuchevsky, D. V. Grigorovich, the Botkin family, including friend V. P. Botkin - both they and I. M. Sechenov were never Marxists (that is, supporters of a comprehensive irrational "dialectical materialism” by I. Dietzgen, which is radically different from the rationalist “materialist dialectic” of Marx himself).
Biographers of I.M. Sechenov, therefore, with the aim of organizing repressions against the academician of numerous relatives of I.M. serves as cybernetics”, who declared cybernetics a pseudoscience, and the scientific method of I. M. Sechenov - “a mechanism that turns into idealism”.
I. M. Sechenov, who received a solid engineering and physical and mathematical education and effectively applied it in his scientific and pedagogical activities, of course, also used the approach that was later called cybernetics. He himself prepared, although he did not publish, a course in higher mathematics. According to Academician A. N. Krylov, of all biologists, only Helmholtz, also known as a great mathematician, could know mathematics as well as Sechenov. Sechenov’s student A.F. Samoilov recalled: “It seems to me that the appearance of Helmholtz - a physiologist, physiologist-philosopher and the appearance of I.M. Sechenov are close, related to each other both in the nature of the circle of thoughts that attracted and captured them, and in the ability to assert position of a sober natural scientist in areas where the speculation of philosophers has hitherto reigned. I. M. Sechenov - President of the First International Psychological Congress in Paris in 1889.
Since 1889 - assistant professor, since 1891 - professor of physiology at Moscow University. In 1901 he retired, but continued experimental work, as well as teaching at the Prechistensky courses for workers in 1903-04.
Sechenov's main works:
"Reflexes of the brain" - 1863
"Physiology of the nervous system" - 1866
"Elements of Thought" - 1879
"On the absorption of CO2 by solutions of salts and strong acids" - 1888
"Physiology of nerve centers" - 1891
"On alkalis of blood and lymph" - 1893
"Physiological criteria for setting the length of the working day" - 1895
"Instrument for fast and accurate analysis of gases" - 1896
"Portable breathing apparatus" - 1900, together with M. N. Shaternikov.
"Essay on the working movements of man" 1901
"Objective Thought and Reality" - 1902
"Autobiographical Notes" - 1904.
Ivan Sechenov is an outstanding Russian scientist. For the first time in history, he succeeded in substantiating the reflex nature of unconscious behavior. Sechenov is the founder of the physiological school. Based on the results of many years of research, he proved that the basis of mental phenomena is physiological processes in the body. In addition, the scientist demonstrated that the physiology of the individual can be studied by objective methods.
Ivan Sechenov was born in 1829 in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 1848 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Engineering and Technical University, but a military career did not work out for him. A few years later, Sechenov retired with the rank of second lieutenant. At the same time, he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University in the status of a free student. The scientist attended lectures by T. Granovsky and P. Kudryavtsev, which allowed him to gain deep knowledge in the field of cultural studies and pedagogy, history, philosophy, theology and medicine.
After receiving his doctorate in 1856, Sechenov went abroad to study physiology. In 1856-1859 he worked in the Berlin laboratories of Müller, Dubois-Reymond and Hoppe-Seyler. Here the scientist prepared the following dissertation, the topic of which concerned the physiology of alcohol intoxication. He defended it in 1860 at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. At the same time, he organizes one of the first Russian physiological laboratories. In 1876-1888, Sechenov worked as a professor in the department of anatomy, histology and physiology at the Zoological Department of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. In 1901, the scientist takes a well-deserved rest, but continues his experimental work and teaching.
By 1868, Ivan Sechenov had finally formed his physiological school. In 1866, he published the book Physiology of the Nervous System, which is still used today as a foundation for studying the processes occurring in living organisms. The scientific work of 1879 "Elements of Thought" became a real revolution in the field of psychology. Before Sechenov, no one had been able to formulate the fundamental principles of human thinking so clearly.
The physiological laboratory organized by the academician, which worked at the Medico-Surgical Academy, was the largest research center. Scientific research was carried out here, concerning not only physiology, but also pharmacology and clinical medicine. The course of lectures that the scientist prepared while working at Moscow University became the basis of the work Physiology of the Nerve Centers, which was published in 1891. And in 1901, the scientist completes work on the "Essay on the working movements of man." Before that, together with M. Shaternikov, the academician develops the principle of operation of a portable breathing apparatus. In 1902, Sechenov draws up his next work, Subject Thought and Reality.
In 1905, the life of the greatest scientist was cut short. But later his works had a significant impact on the development of such sciences as psychology and medicine, biology, natural science and the general theory of knowledge. At the same time, individual experimental developments of the academician were very useful in the gas transportation industry, as well as in the field of oil and gas production.
