Linus Carl Pauling
Pauling, Linus Carl (1901-1994) was an American chemist who won two Nobel Prizes, the 1954 Nobel Prize in chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize. Pauling won the chemistry prize for his research on the nature of chemical bonds. He showed that a knowledge of the way atoms are linked helps explain the structure of complex molecules. Pauling won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to ban nuclear weapons, especially his campaign against nuclear weapons testing.
Pauling was born on Feb. 28, 1901, in Portland, Oregon. He was the only son of Herman Henry William Pauling, a self-taught pharmacist, and Lucy Isabelle (Darling) Pauling. The family, including Linus's two younger sisters, moved to Condon, Oregon, where Pauling's father opened a pharmacy. However, he died in 1910, leaving Pauling's mother to support them by running a boarding house in Portland. As a boy, Pauling developed an interest in science, especially in to a psychological stimulus.
Pavlov and his co-workers found that if food is placed in a dog's mouth, saliva is produced by reflex action, a reaction that is not planned or decided beforehand. For example, if you accidentally touch a hot stove, you jerk away before you have time to think what you are doing. The hot stove is called the stimulus and the jerking away is the response. Scientists call these kinds of reflexes unconditioned reflexes. Unconditioned reflexes occur with no specific learning or experience. They are considered involuntary acts, because a response always occurs when a stimulus is presented.
Pavlov observed that if a dog merely sees a piece of food, salivation occurs automatically. This is called a conditioned reflex, a kind of reflex action that works by association. Pavlov showed that the flow of saliva—though originally an automatic reaction to the smell of food, an unconditioned reflex—can become a conditioned reflex. He experimented by ringing a bell each time he brought food to a dog. Eventually, the dog's mouth began to water when Pavlov merely rang the bell—with no food being present. The dog associated the ringing of the bell with the food, just as it associated the odor with the food.
The connection between psychology and physiology fascinated Pavlov and became the main focus of his research after 1902. He tried to apply the concept of conditioned reflexes to humans. He believed that language resulted from complex conditioned responses during the developmental stages of childhood. He explained certain types of mental illness through contradictory stimuli.
American psychologist John Broadus Watson introduced the school of psychology called behaviorism in 1913, drawing mainly from the work of Pavlov. Watson believed that changes in behavior result from conditioning, a learning process in which a new response becomes associated with a certain stimulus. Although most psychologists accept the importance of behaviorism, most also recognize a number of other theories in studying the development of personality and in treating patients.
In 1917, the Russian Revolution brought about the Communist state of the Soviet Union. Pavlov disagreed with the policies of the new government, but due to his status as the greatest living Russian scientist, V. I. Lenin, the Soviet leader personally guaranteed Pavlov's research and freedom, while other scientists suffered censorship and other obstructions.
Pavlov died of pneumonia in Leningrad on Feb. 27, 1936.