Psychologist and psychiatrist, b. 1 August 1829 (Teply Stan [now Sechenovo], Russia), d. 2 November 1905 (Moscow).
Ivan Sechenov studied at the Military Engineering School in St. Petersburg from 1843 to 1848 and became a military engineer. In 1850 he changed to medicine and studied at Moscow University until 1856. During the next six years he studied and worked with researchers in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna and Paris.
In 1860 Sechenov received his M.D. from the Military-Medical Academy of St. Petersburg and was appointed professor. He was the founder of the first Russian school of physiology. In 1870 he resigned his professorship in protest when Ilja Mechnikov, the founder of immunology who later shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology with the German Paul Ehrlich, was refused a chair at the University of St. Petersburg.
For several months Sechenov worked in Mendeleev's laboratory in St. Petersburg. In 1871 he was appointed to a chair at the Novorossysk University at Odessa, the university where Mechnikov had been appointed Titular Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. In 1876 he returned to St. Petersburg and was appointed to a professorship, which he held until 1888. During1891-1901 he was professor in Moscow.
Sechenov's major interest was neurophysiology (the structure of the brain). He showed that brain activity is linked to electric currents and was the first scientist to introduce electrophysiology into laboratories and into teaching. His work "The Reflexes of the Brain" became a major text for medical and psychological research alike.
Like several other Russian scientists of the period Sechenov was often in conflict with the tsarist government and conservative collegues, but he did not emigrate. His work laid the foundations for the great achievements of Russian science in the study of reflexes and animal and human behaviour.
Department of Neurology, The University of Illinois at Chicago. (2003) Ivan Sechenov. http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcne/founders/page0085.html (accessed 8 August 2004)
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; The Virtual Laboratory, Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life. (2004) Ivan Sechenov http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/people/data/per137.html (accessed 8 August 2004)
Nobel e-Museum, the Official Web Site of The Nobel Foundation (2004) Ilya Mechnikov. http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1908/mechnikov-bio.html (accessed 8 August 2004); based on Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967.
Memorial of Ivan Sechenov at the I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy.