Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829–1905)- Physiologist, naturalist, doctor of medicine, professor, honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, laureate of the XXXII Demidov Prize.

Education. In 1848, I. M. Sechenov graduated from the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg.

At our university. He graduated in 1856, worked as a Privatdozent, head of the Department of Physiology. With the participation of I. M. Sechenov, the Physiological Institute was founded.

Internships abroad. After graduating from our university, he trained abroad. Emile Dubois-Reymond, Carl Ludwig, Herman Helmholtz, Claude Bernard had a particularly deep influence on I. M. Sechenov. K. Ludwig became a lifelong teacher and friend of the Russian physiologist.

Short biography. Ivan Sechenov was born in the village of Tyoply Stan, Simbirsk province (now the village of Sechenovo, Nizhny Novgorod region). In 1856, after graduating from the medical faculty, he went abroad at his own expense to prepare for a professorship.

During his stay abroad, Sechenov struck up friendly relations with the future outstanding scientists S. P. Botkin, D. I. Mendeleev, A. P. Borodin, which continued throughout his life.

In 1860 he became a professor at the Department of Physiology at the Medical and Surgical Academy of St. Petersburg. It was then that he organized one of the first physiological laboratories in Russia.

I. M. Sechenov actively supported the progressive aspirations of women for higher medical education. He taught Nadezhda Prokofievna Suslova and Maria Alexandrovna Bokova (his future wife), who became the first female doctors in Russia.

Working in various higher institutions of Russia, I. M. Sechenov always achieved brilliant results, both in science and in the education of students, in the organization of scientific and social activities. Among his colleagues and friends were outstanding people from different fields of science and culture. So, for example, at the Novorossiysk University in Odessa, he talked with I. I. Mechnikov (Nobel Prize winner in 1908).

In 1889, I.M. Sechenov returned to the alma-mater to the Department of Physiology, and two years later he headed it. Ten years of leadership of the department (1891-1901) were fruitful: the efforts of the scientist created a physiological laboratory. Here, I. M. Sechenov studied gases and the respiratory function of the blood, the laws of human labor activity, and was able to establish optimal modes of work and rest.

Leaving the post of head in 1901, I. M. Sechenov continued to actively conduct scientific research in his laboratory.

The scientist has always supported any form of popularization of science, in the last years of his life he lectured on anatomy and physiology in the Prechistina working classes.

He died in 1905. He was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery. In 1940, his ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery.

Scientific achievements. In 1860, I. M. Sechenov defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine "Materials for the future physiology of alcohol intoxication."

I. M. Sechenov discovered and described in detail the fundamental physiological phenomena of the activity of the central nervous system: central inhibition, summation of excitations and aftereffect.

He put forward a position on the originality of reflexes, the centers of which lie in the brain, and on the reflex basis of mental activity. He gave a scientific justification for the optimal duration of the working day for workers.

I. P. Pavlov, an outstanding physiologist, Nobel Prize winner (1904), called the doctrine of the reflex nature of brain activity a brilliant stroke of Sechenov's thought, and the author himself - "the founder of native physiology and the bearer of a truly free spirit." For the explanation of mental life, this doctrine is of decisive importance, since it reveals the specific brain mechanisms of the mental, shows under what conditions it is formed and what significance it has in the life of the organism. IM Sechenov's brilliant conjecture about the reflex nature of brain activity found experimental confirmation and development in Pavlov's teaching. I. P. Pavlov exclaims:

“Yes, I am glad that, together with Ivan Mikhailovich and a regiment of my dear collaborators, we have acquired for the mighty power of physiological research, instead of a half-hearted, indivisible animal organism. And this is entirely our Russian undeniable merit in world science, in the general human thought.

Perpetuation of memory in our university. In 1955, our university was named after I. M. Sechenov, a monument to the scientist in front of the Museum was erected in 1958 (the work of sculptor L. E. Kerbel). In 2015, a center for specialized training of schoolchildren in Moscow "Medical Sechenov pre-university" was opened, in which the Sechenov auditorium dedicated to the great physiologist was created.

in our Museum. The Museum funds contain publications by I. M. Sechenov, including books and articles published in Germany, Austria in German: Physiologische Studien über die Hemmungsmechanismen für die Reflexthätigkeit des Rückenmarks im Gehirne des Frosches. Hirschwald, Berlin 1863; Ueber die elektrische und chemische Reizung der sensiblen Rückenmarksnerven des Frosches. Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz 1868.

A significant number of devices that the scientist used in his experiments are presented in the branch of the Museum - the exposition "Memorial Museum of I.M. Sechenov". Among them: ergographs, kymographs, sphygmomanometer, galvanometer, reflexometer, etc.

Sechenov Ivan Mikhailovich a brief biography of the naturalist, founder of the Russian physiological scientific school is presented in this article.

Ivan Sechenov short biography

The future scientist was born August 13, 1829 in the village of Teply Stan, Simbirsk province in the family of a noble landowner and his former serf.

In 1848 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Engineering School and went to serve in the army in Kyiv. Sechenov retired in 1850 and entered the Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University. From the university he trained in Germany, where he met and became friends with D. I. Mendeleev, S. P. Botkin, A. P. Borodin (composer), A. Ivanov (artist).

In 1860, Sechenov returned to the city of St. Petersburg, defended his dissertation and became a doctor of medical sciences. After that, he was offered to lead a department at the Medical-Surgical Academy and a laboratory in which research was carried out in the field of toxicology, physiology, clinical medicine and pharmacology.

In 1861, Ivan Mikhailovich met Maria Alexandrovna Bokova, who wanted to become a doctor and receive an appropriate education. But at that time it was very difficult for a woman to get a higher education, such are the customs. She began to attend lectures at the Medico-Surgical Academy, and Sechenov tried in every possible way to help her in her studies. Under his guidance, Maria Bokova wrote her doctoral dissertation and successfully defended it in Zurich. Subsequently, she became his wife and faithful companion until the end of her life.

From 1876 to 1901 he taught at the University of Moscow. For more than 20 years, Ivan Mikhailovich studied the gases and respiratory functions of the blood, studied the reflexes of the brain. He owns the discovery of the phenomenon of central inhibition in 1863, which was described in the work "Reflexes of the brain".

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 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, 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 - even people as far from medicine as he was attended - 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 decision 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 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", declaring 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.

The son of a former serf peasant woman, who became a doctor of sciences. A probable prototype of the characters in the novels of Turgenev and Chernyshevsky. The first translator of one of Darwin's works into Russian. All this is the physiologist and educator Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov.

Truth in wine

One of Sechenov's early scientific works was a study on the physiology of alcohol intoxication. It was probably based on personal experience: in his youth, Ivan Mikhailovich was a regular at literary meetings organized by Apollon Grigoriev. These meetings were not limited to a discussion of poetry only: rumors circulated all over the district about how young connoisseurs of literature were drinking. However, Sechenov directed the experience gained at these events in the right direction. Subsequently, his university work on the effects of alcohol on the human body grew into a full-fledged dissertation. Her defense took place in 1860 at the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg.

"Father of Russian physiology"

Sechenov became the founder of the first scientific school of physiology in Russia. He was not only a theoretician, but also a convinced practitioner: it was through the efforts of Sechenov that one of the first domestic laboratories appeared, within the walls of which physiological research was carried out. Already in the 1860s, Sechenov made discoveries that turned the science of his day upside down. For example, he wrote that “the act of nervous excitation is an act by nature electrical; the law of excitation in muscle tissue is the same as in the nerve; the act of muscular excitation can be called electrical, as well as the process of nervous excitation.

Sechenov's research was initially rebuffed by the authorities. For example, one of the most famous works of the scientist - "Reflexes of the brain" - at first did not pass the censorship. When it was finally published, the scientist was accused of "extreme materialism" and was almost prosecuted.

However, Sechenov continued to stand his ground. “Why do I need a lawyer? I will take a frog to court and do all my experiments in front of the judges: then let the prosecutor refute me, ”he said confidently. Nevertheless, the help of a specialist was useful to the researcher: an experienced lawyer V. D. Spasovich justified his name and literally “saved” both Sechenov himself and his work.

A talented person is talented in everything

Sechenov was interested in a great variety of scientific problems. For example, he devoted a lot of time and effort to studying the patterns of interaction between blood and carbon dioxide. This helped him explain why aeronauts died in balloons. It was thanks to these studies that aviation physiology was born. In addition, we are indebted to Sechenov for the appearance of labor physiology. It was he who calculated that it is harmful for a person to work more than eight hours a day, and also introduced such a concept as “active rest” into scientific circulation.

Sechenov went down in history not only as a researcher, but also as a popularizer of science. It is important to note that it was he, together with his wife, who translated into Russian the work of Charles Darwin "The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection", giving the opportunity to get acquainted with this work to those readers who did not speak English.

Ivan Mikhailovich made a certain contribution to literature: contemporaries considered him one of the prototypes of Bazarov, the hero of Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons", as well as the prototype of Kirsanov from Chernyshevsky's "What to do?"

Teaching activity

Sechenov was also a talented lecturer: he knew how to arouse students' interest in science and explain even the most complex things in an accessible way. However, at the age of 70, he decided to abandon such work, arguing as follows: “The years, the consciousness of the beginning of backwardness in science and the conviction that the old man should not wait for the time when the public will want him to leave, prompted me to end teaching.”

However, students never thought about Sechenov's departure. A.F. Samoilov, a university assistant physiologist, spoke of the professor as follows: “I have never met a lecturer with such a talent in my life before or later. He had excellent diction. I was especially struck by the power of logic in his lectures. Sechenov's lectures were listened to and attended by students very willingly.

Probably, it was precisely because of such reviews that the professor’s farewell to teaching did not take place: he nevertheless continued to lecture at the Prechistensky courses.