"Contrary to legend, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) never trained a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell."

So begins this definitive, deeply researched biography of Ivan Pavlov. Daniel P. Todes fundamentally reinterprets the Russian physiologist's famous research on conditional reflexes and weaves his life, values, and science into the tumultuous century of Russian history-particularly that of its intelligentsia-from the reign of tsar Nicholas I to Stalin's time.

Ivan Pavlov was born to a family of priests...