On December 10, 1904, Pavlov stepped forward on the platform of the Royal Musical Academy’s Great Hall to accept the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine from King Oscar II of Sweden. He was the first physiologist and the first Russian to win that award.
This thrilling climax to his jubilee year resulted from the same features of his scientific style as had his renown in previous years. The great number and range of Pavlov’s contributions, his synthesis of them into a compelling description of a precise and integrated digestive system, the appeal of his lab’s various products to scientists and physicians, and his own symbolic appeal as an embodiment of modern experimental physiology and its potential for medical practice—these are all evident in the deliberations of the Nobel Committee. So, too, are the criticisms raised in the early twentieth century against Pavlov’s conclusions.
Pavlov was nominated four times, beginning in 1901, before finally winning the prize, and that victory was hardly inevitable. Various contingencies—the changing identity of the Nobel Committee’s five members and their group dynamics, to say nothing of the merits of Pavlov’s competitors—played an important role in the competition. Yet the imprint of his laboratory system and scientific vision remains clearly visible in the history of his candidacy.
Alfred Nobel’s will, and the statutes created to implement it, specified that, beginning in 1901, the medical faculty of the Karolinska Medical-Surgical Institute would award a prize to the person “who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine.” Nominations were solicited from individuals in a wide range of scientific and medical institutions throughout the world.
In 1901, three of the four letters nominating Pavlov were postmarked St. Petersburg. Two were written on IEM letterhead: both its director, Sergei Luk’ianov, and the chief of its chemistry division, Marceli Nencki, nominated their institution’s physiologist. A third nominating letter was signed by thirty of Pavlov’s colleagues at the Military-Medical Academy. The circumstances surrounding this last nomination underline the extent to which it was an expression of institutional and national pride. Such a collective letter could only have been organized with the active support of the Academy’s strong-willed president, Viktor Pashutin. No record exists of the history of the nominating letter, but it seems clear that Pashutin’s appreciation of Pavlov’s contributions and his own strong desire to advance the interests of his Academy and Russian science trumped his strong dislike for Pavlov. Whatever his faults, Pavlov was the only member of the Academy who possessed both a European reputation and accomplishments that fit the ambiguous criteria for a prize in “physiology or medicine.”
Had Pavlov read the Academy’s nominating letter he would certainly have been less disappointed with the Russian response to Lectures:
For almost fifteen years Mr. Pavlov has studied in his laboratory the fundamental questions of the physiology and pathology of the digestive glands. These systematic researches have provided science with an entire series of new methods, ingeniously conceived, which, as applied by their creator, have led to the discovery of a number of extremely important facts regarding the physiology and chemistry of the digestive glands and their secretions. Guided by the correct principle that the study of physiological phenomena should be conducted upon subjects that are as normal as possible, Mr. Pavlov has conducted his experiments upon animals that have earlier been operated upon and which are in a normal physiological condition. The ensemble of these experiments, the number and fertility of which grows every year, has provided the author with vast material for a profound analysis of the mechanisms and laws governing the work of the digestive glands, and subsequently for a synthetic conception of their work under diverse real conditions. The incontestable importance of Mr. Pavlov’s work for pure physiology and its application to practical medicine serve as sufficient proof of the justice of our proposition.1
The fourth nominating letter attested to Pavlov’s international reputation in the wake of the German edition of Lectures. Johns Hopkins University physiologist William Howell wrote—with the committee’s selection criteria in mind—that “Professor Pavlov’s work upon the physiology of digestion and secretion seems to me the most important contribution to physiology in recent years that can be traced solely or mainly to a single individual.”2
Forty-one candidates were nominated for the Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901; Pavlov was one of twenty deemed worthy of further investigation. That task was passed to the sole physiologist on the committee, the Karolinska Institute’s professor of physiology Johan Erik Johansson. It was probably Johansson who decided to enlist the aid of his former coworker, Robert Tigerstedt, and to visit St. Petersburg in order to witness Pavlov’s experiments firsthand. Neither the use of an outside expert nor the site visit was unusual in the early years of the Nobel deliberations, when its experts were enjoined to evaluate independently the truthfulness of a nominee’s scientific claims.3
Tigerstedt and Pavlov had been acquainted from their days together in the Ludwig lab, and had exchanged friendly letters about Pavlov’s Lectures and his editing of the Russian edition of Tigerstedt’s textbook on human physiology. Johansson also had an indirect connection with Pavlov, though neither was probably aware of it: like Pavlov, the Swedish physiologist had, at Nobel’s request, experimented briefly with blood transfusion in the early 1890s.4 Johansson had subsequently corresponded with Nobel, and he played an important role in discussions about the meaning of two key terms in Nobel’s will: the philanthropist had specified that five separate awards were to be made to those who “during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind,” and that one prize was for “the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine.” Upon deliberation, the phrase “preceding year” was interpreted to mean “recently,” and “the domain of physiology or medicine” was interpreted to encompass all the medical sciences.5
Having informed Pavlov beforehand, Johansson and Tigerstedt arrived in St. Petersburg on June 8, 1901. The nominee had prepared two dozen of his special dog technologies, and for the next ten days, from 10 a.m. until 6 or 7 p.m., he used them to demonstrate his “most important results.”6 Pavlov treated his visitors, basically, to an abbreviated live version of Lectures.
They were most favorably impressed. Their extensive joint report of July 1901, and Tigerstedt’s lengthy addition to it, became part of the committee’s permanent record, framing discussions of Pavlov’s achievements during all four years of his candidacy. For some combination of reasons—their appreciation of Pavlov’s scientific contributions and, perhaps, shared disciplinary allegiances and personal relationships that developed during their ten days together in St. Petersburg—Johansson and Tigerstedt became Pavlov’s committed advocates.
Invoking their firsthand observations, they testified to the veracity of proposition after proposition advanced in Lectures about the salivary, gastric, and pancreatic glands, and in Pavlov’s other publications about the survival of vagotomized dogs, the role of enterokinase, and so forth. They witnessed Pavlov’s creation of an isolated sac (“one of the most delicate [operations] in contemporary physiology”) and his demonstration that this sac faithfully mirrored the activity of the intact portion of the stomach. They described approvingly Pavlov’s experimental demonstration of the failure of mechanical irritation to excite the gastric glands, of the governing role of nervous mechanisms, and of the important role of the psyche in salivary, gastric, and pancreatic secretion. Pavlov apparently did not demonstrate the existence of his precise characteristic secretory curves, but the visiting physiologists did report that “On operated animals, one could observe that the gastric acid after ingestion of meat differs from that after the intake of bread. Therefore, gastric secretion has a different course for different substances.”7
In the conclusion to their report, Johansson and Tigerstedt attested to the truthfulness of Pavlov’s scientific findings:
Summarizing our observations, which, as should be evident from [this report] extended to most of the areas of Prof. Pawlow’s work—in which a rigorous scientific precision has been observed—we wish to emphasize that it is our certain conviction that the evidence presented to us by Prof. Pawlow must be considered to be fully and positively established—it can be presented at any time, naturally under the presumption that the experiments are conducted with the necessary precision and care.8
Johansson and Tigerstedt’s submission of an extensive list of Pavlov’s achievements is especially interesting in light of the committee’s charge to “call attention to the special aspect of the [nominee’s] discovery which [the expert] considers decisive.”9 Committed advocates of Pavlov’s candidacy, they did not identify any single decisive “discovery.” Rather, they indicated the great number and range of Pavlov’s contributions to his field.
A final comment in their report reflected an important reservation that had already been raised against Pavlov’s candidacy: to what extent were Pavlov’s works really Pavlov’s? The nominee himself, after all, had pronounced his Lectures “the deed of the entire laboratory” and credited his coworkers by name for conducting the relevant experiments. Guided by an image of the heroic lone investigator, the Nobel Prize committee here confronted a new form of scientific production. Tigerstedt and Johansson weighed in on Pavlov’s behalf:
We also feel that we should mention that during our stay in Prof. Pawlow’s laboratory we reached the conclusion that all the works issued from it, whether or not they carry Prof. Pawlow’s name, to a substantial degree constitute his intellectual property, as he has not only carried out all the operations on the animals used in the experiments, but has also been the leader and organizer with regard to the planning, development, and implementation of the special investigations.10
Tigerstedt was apparently dissatisfied with the case he and Johansson had made, and shortly thereafter submitted his individual appraisal of the candidate’s achievements. He began with the issue of intellectual credit. Pavlov’s work, he conceded, indeed represented a synthesis of “a large number of specialized dissertations” written by other people. Yet Pavlov himself had “awakened” these researchers’ interest in the subject, and their theses were permeated by the chief’s “guiding idea.” These works “must therefore, to a substantial degree, be seen to constitute one single man’s intellectual property, although this man, despite his clear work capability and his great endurance, would not by himself have been capable of collecting the colossal amount of material which has been observed and that are put forth in these works.”11 The practice of “coworkership,” then, should not “constitute any hindrance to attributing these texts to Prof. Pawlow.”
The “guiding idea” uniting all these works, Tigerstedt explained, was that “the digestive organs, through a many-sided and extremely subtle regulation, cooperate for the resolution of their task.”12 This idea, in turn, encompassed two insights of general significance. First, Pavlov’s analysis of the role of the psyche provided “an extremely obvious example of how the activity of organs that definitely are not under the influence of our will can still be rather closely dependent on our mental state—and we have thereby received a new intimation of the close dependence in which mind and body stand in relation to one another.” Second, and of no less “general physiological interest,” Pavlov had demonstrated that the principle of specific excitability extended beyond the sensory organs to the inner organs as well.
Tigerstedt then reviewed Pavlov’s many specific knowledge claims. These, he attested, were “as correct as facts in physiology can be,” and had been “tested so many times on different individuals that any doubt concerning the correctness of the observations must be excluded.”13 Reviewing Pavlov’s methodological contributions, he thought it necessary to respond to the objection that these were not original. Conceding that others had previously devised fistulas and even an isolated sac, he noted that Pavlov’s improvement of these operations, and his unprecedented success in caring for the experimental animals thus created, had enabled him to avoid the errors of his predecessors and so to accomplish something substantially new.14
Tigerstedt’s and Johansson’s arguments proved persuasive for a key member of the committee—Karl Mörner, who was both rector of the Karolinska Institute and its professor of chemistry and pharmacy. In a short note of July 30, 1901, Mörner pronounced himself satisfied that “Prof. Pawlow’s work regarding the glands of the digestive canal is of the nature and importance” worthy of a Nobel Prize.15
Pavlov, however, was but one of four candidates who had passed through the initial stages of the selection process to achieve that status. He joined Emil von Behring, renowned for his development of serum therapy, particularly against diphtheria; Ronald Ross, who had contributed greatly to understanding and combating malaria; and Niels Finsen, who had developed light therapy for various diseases.
Committee discussions were not recorded, but a memo written by Tigerstedt after one session in September indicates that Pavlov’s relative paucity of publications in his own name and the related problem of intellectual property continued to weaken his candidacy.16 It was, Tigerstedt insisted, “totally incorrect” to regard Pavlov’s Lectures as “a kind of compilation of the experimental dissertations upon which they are based.” Quite to the contrary, both the theses and the chief’s synthetic work represented “the contributions of the Pavlovian school” and should be considered jointly in evaluating the candidate’s achievements.17
In August, a rumor had circulated throughout the international scientific community that Pavlov and Finsen would share the Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Printed as fact in Russia’s conservative newspaper New Times, The Physician, and the Military-Medical Academy’s bulletin, the news elicited a congratulatory letter from Pavlov’s proud mentor, Tsion, who was then living in Paris. An abashed Pavlov could only reply that “As for the prize, the press has confused something—it has probably still not been awarded, but your happiness for your pupil of long ago is for me a very great reward.”18
Three weeks later, Pavlov finished third in the committee’s balloting, and fourth in the final deliberations. The majority voted to award the prize jointly to Ross and Finsen, with a minority favoring a joint award to Ross and Pavlov. Behring’s candidacy suffered from the investigators’ conclusion that “both the fundamental discovery and the proof of its practical value are so old that, while admitting that in other respects they fully deserve a prize, we cannot now recommend them for the honor.”19 The faculty collegium of the Karolinska Institute, however, had the last word, and it overruled the divided committee. The prize finally went to Behring “for his work on serum therapy, especially its application against diphtheria, by which he has opened a new road in the domain of medical science and thereby placed in the hands of the physician a victorious weapon against illness and death.”20
The decision-making process of 1901 did, however, produce enduring, and ultimately critical, successes for Pavlov. For one thing, the glowing reports by Johansson and Tigerstedt became the basic documents for future evaluations of his candidacy. Even more important, the two physiologists became his determined champions. Each did what he could to advance Pavlov’s candidacy in subsequent years.
Tigerstedt’s visit to Pavlov’s lab began the transformation of their acquaintance into an enduring friendship. The Finnish physiologist’s first letter to Pavlov after his return to Helsinki was addressed to “Respected colleague,” but by September 1902 he had adopted the salutation “Dear friend.”21 Perhaps one element in their budding friendship was Pavlov’s generosity regarding a lab product that had especially intrigued his colleague. Himself interested in research on digestive fluids, Tigerstedt apparently had expressed enthusiasm about Pavlov’s method for acquiring pure gastric juice. Pavlov responded by offering to send him the necessary dog technology. Tigerstedt demurred, professing concern that he would be unable to care properly for the animal in the constricted setting of his laboratory. He did, however, request and receive “a little natural gastric juice.”22 By October 1902, Mörner too had received a sample of gastric juice from the nominee.23
Tigerstedt waited less than one week after the Nobel committee had settled the 1901 prize upon Behring to nominate Pavlov for the succeeding year.24 He also advised Pavlov that he and his coworkers should participate in force at the upcoming Congress of Northern Naturalists and Physicians in Helsingfors (Helsinki), which would be attended by some of the Nobel judges.25 Babkin later recalled that, in order to impress them, the chief “mobilized his whole laboratory that spring in order to present as many papers as possible at the Congress.”26
The lab was indeed well-represented at Helsingfors, where its representatives delivered eight separate reports. These addressed a variety of topics that reflected the changing nature of scientific discourse about digestive secretion. Only two coworkers, Babkin and Sokolov, developed the lab’s standard lines of investigation.27 A third, Tolochinov, delivered the first public account of conditional reflexes and the lab’s changing view of the psyche. Savich presented two reports: one on enterokinase and a second that reaffirmed nervous control over the pancreas in the wake of Bayliss and Starling’s discovery of secretin. Val’ter also addressed the humoral challenge, presenting experimental evidence to argue that the blunt exciters of acid and secretin could not explain the specificity of pancreatic secretion. As one of the Nobel committee members present, Karl Mörner, noted in his report, two other presentations—one by Ganike and another coauthored by Pavlov and his coworker Parashchuk—“touched upon territory that Pawlow and his disciples had earlier avoided—specifically, questions of a purely chemical nature.”28 Ganike addressed the chemical nature of pepsin, while Pavlov advanced a bold chemical proposition: that pepsin and rennet were one and the same substance.29
The two Nobel investigators were unimpressed by the forays into physiological chemistry. Oskar Medin, professor of pediatrics at the Karolinska Institute, noted that Ganike’s report “did not contain anything new.”30 Mörner added that Ganike had merely repeated earlier experiments conducted by Cornelius Pekelharing in Utrecht. (He observed, however, that Pekelharing had relied upon Pavlov’s method for acquiring pure gastric juice, and that this redounded to the chief’s credit.)31 Mörner also raised a number of criticisms regarding Pavlov and Parashchuk’s report (including one concerning Pavlov’s interpretation of quantitative data), and observed that the chemist Olaf Hammersten had introduced Pavlov’s talk by himself offering several important reasons to reject the Russian’s conclusions. Medin offered the blunt assessment “I was not convinced.”32
Nevertheless, Mörner concluded his report to the committee on a strong positive note. He endorsed Johansson and Tigerstedt’s earlier summary of Pavlov’s scientific contributions, added that the Russian’s methodological innovations had “paved the road” for future advances, and emphasized the broader significance of three of Pavlov’s accomplishments: his proofs for specific excitability and the role of the psyche, and the elucidation of nervous mechanisms that controlled the glands. “In a science that has been cultivated so thoroughly as has physiology, one could hardly expect that one person could make so many important contributions as has Pawlow.” Taken together, these contributions constituted a “thorough transformation” of digestive physiology and were “fully deserving of a Nobel Prize.”33
In its final deliberations, the committee quickly identified the same three leading candidates as it had the previous year—Finsen, Ross, and Pavlov. Johansson was not on the committee this year, so Pavlov lacked a strong advocate. The five members split between two basic positions: Emil Holmgren, professor of histology, argued—and Mörner agreed—that Ross should be ranked first and Pavlov second. In Holmgren’s view, Ross’s work best combined theoretical and practical contributions. Pavlov was “an extraordinarily skillful and talented scientist,” but his work had not conferred the same “benefit upon mankind” as had Ross’s. Conversely, Finsen had devised a “very beneficial method of treatment” but was an undistinguished scientist. Holmgren suggested, then, that the prize be divided between Ross and Pavlov to signal the committee’s appreciation of both practical and theoretical contributions. Professor of Hygiene Ernst Almquist, Professor of Pathological Anatomy Carl Sundberg, and Professor of Pediatrics Oskar Medin adopted another position: for them, all three leading candidates fully met Nobel’s criterion of conferring “the greatest benefit upon mankind.” Finsen’s and Ross’s contributions were of more immediate practical benefit, yet Pavlov’s achievements, too, showed signs of therapeutic usefulness. Finsen’s and Ross’s discoveries, however, were more “original” and theoretically exciting than Pavlov’s. Considering Ross’s work to be more scientifically sophisticated than Finsen’s, this group ranked Ross first, Finsen second, and Pavlov third—and recommended that Ross alone receive the prize. All five committee members, then, ranked Ross first, and the majority voted to award him an undivided prize. The Faculty Collegium approved this decision.34
Pavlov’s candidacy proved substantially weaker the following year. He was nominated in 1903 by five individuals—including Tigerstedt and Johansson—and both the investigator of his candidacy and the committee’s composition remained unchanged, but criticism of some of Pavlov’s key scientific claims over the past two years now entered the committee’s deliberations.35 In his report, Mörner concluded therefore that despite his many worthy achievements, “I believe that it would not be opportune to award Pawlow this year’s Nobel Prize.”36
Mörner mentioned “the emergence of vague questions” about four aspects of Pavlov’s research.37 First, Pavlov’s foray into physiological chemistry—his identification of pepsin and rennet—had proven unconvincing. Some scientists supported Pavlov’s position, others opposed it, and the issue had not been “definitively resolved.”38 Second, and “more important,” was Bayliss and Starling’s discovery of a humoral mechanism of pancreatic secretion, which cast doubt upon Pavlov’s broader notions of nervous control and specific excitability. Mörner listed a number of important scientists who agreed with Bayliss and Starling, but concluded, again, that this issue remained unresolved.39 Third, alluding to the research of Delezenne and Frouin, Mörner noted that Pavlov’s investigations on pancreatic secretion had been conducted before scientists had fully appreciated the difference between zymogenic and active ferments, and that this realization had created “an opening” for criticism of Pavlov’s conclusion about the specific and purposive secretion of the pancreas.40
He devoted most attention, however, to the disturbing criticisms raised by “one of Pawlow’s former disciples,” Lev Popel’skii.41 These went to the very heart of Pavlov’s claim about the “precise adaptation” of pancreatic secretion.42 Popel’skii’s argument was grounded in “criticism of some of the details of works conducted by some of Pawlow’s students,” and Mörner cogently summarized the Russian’s critique of four key dissertations. For example, he noted that “Popielski says that Lintvarew selected certain data that agreed with the [lab’s] preconceived view” and added that “Popielski cites the [complete] data, with a reference to the page of the dissertation in which they appear.”43 Popel’skii’s critique of the concept of precise and purposive secretion extended also to Pavlov’s analysis of gastric and salivary secretion, and here again Mörner provided some detail. He also mentioned that Popel’skii had himself conducted experiments on pancreatic secretion, and described for the Committee his alternative explanation of secretory patterns in the main glands.44
Pavlov had not replied to Popel’skii’s critique, and Mörner predicted that the future would bring “both attack and defense.” Pavlov would certainly prove able to refute some of the criticisms, but Popel’skii had established that “Pawlow is certainly guilty of one-sidedness in his consistent finding that secretory activity is governed by purposiveness.” Here Pavlov’s claims clearly outstripped his evidence, and even the existing factual foundations “may not be fully reliable.”45
Both in his lengthy report and in his remarks at the committee’s meeting of September 23, 1903, Mörner made clear that he remained impressed by the candidate’s achievements. Recent criticisms concerned “only a part of Pawlow’s research results,” and the more he pondered his corpus as a whole, “the more important it seems to me.”46 He also agreed with Tigerstedt and Johansson that Pavlov deserved intellectual credit for the research of his coworkers, since he remained “the soul and the leader even in the research that his workers and students in the laboratory carry out.”47 Still, during the committee’s deliberations Mörner reiterated his position that, since “certain aspects of Pawlow’s work are now under debate,” it would be “inopportune” to award him the prize.
Nobody on the committee disagreed, and the competition narrowed to Finsen and Koch. Finsen carried four votes out of five and became the prizewinner for 1903.48
By 1904, then, Pavlov was the sole finalist of 1901 who had not yet won the prize. He again received multiple nominations—including one from Vincenz Czerny, director of the surgical clinic at Heidelberg University, and another submitted jointly by Johansson and Carl Gustaf Santesson, professor of pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute.49
The Swedish scientists’ unusually lengthy nominating letter signaled the beginning of a determined campaign to finally gain the prize for Pavlov. They confronted four weaknesses in his candidacy. First, there was the issue of intellectual property, which the nominators dealt with by referring to Tigerstedt and Johansson’s conclusion of 1901 that “the credit for the achievements in [the laboratory’s] works belongs to Pawlow himself.”50 Second, they noted the recent objections to Pavlov’s work that had been reported by Mörner in 1903; these, they argued, were relatively minor when viewed against the background of Pavlov’s many undeniable contributions, both methodologically and to scientific knowledge itself. Third, in a reference to Pavlov’s notion of “purposiveness,” they conceded that the Russian physiologist “has given his doctrine a somewhat teleological formulation that might appear strange to some modern scientists”—but this should “not have any importance.”
Santesson and Johansson devoted the most space to the objection that Pavlov’s contributions lacked sufficient practical import to satisfy Nobel’s directives. They pointed out that A. F. Hornborg—in experiments, it should be noted, that were conducted under Tigerstedt’s supervision—had recently confirmed the importance of appetite to gastric secretion in a young boy.51 Theoretical works such as Pavlov’s, they argued, “only slowly” enter the practical realm. Pavlov’s research, however, was clearly oriented toward practical goals. Drawing upon the eighth chapter of Lectures, they contended that it was surely not “too audacious to predict” that Pavlov’s research would, for example, facilitate the rational reform of diet and treatment of digestive diseases. This was especially probable in view of the “transforming influence” of his methodological contributions upon research in pathology and pharmacodynamics. They closed with the argument that Nobel had intended to reward, not only practical achievements, but also “more theoretical works.” Johansson’s well-known relationship to Nobel no doubt lent authority to this interpretation of the philanthropist’s intent.52
It was Pavlov’s great fortune that Johansson replaced Holmgren on the Nobel committee that year and so, as the committee’s sole physiologist, was assigned to investigate his own nominee. Mörner’s report of 1903 had constituted a reluctant brief for Pavlov’s critics; Johansson’s of 1904 presented a wholehearted and powerful argument for his admirers.
Johansson’s basic rhetorical tactic was to compare—gland by gland—the state of digestive physiology before and after Pavlov’s work, to enumerate the number and range of the candidate’s scientific contributions, and so to portray as unimportant any doubts concerning a few of them. Having visited Pavlov’s lab in 1901, Johansson reminded the committee, he and Tigerstedt had witnessed “with our own eyes” the experiments underlying Pavlov’s knowledge claims.53
Briefly reviewing the scant and contradictory knowledge about glandular mechanisms before Pavlov’s research, Johansson enumerated Pavlov’s major discoveries (identifying many of these findings unapologetically with the theses written by coworkers). Concerning the gastric glands, Pavlov’s main contributions were his demonstrations that the mucous membrane of the stomach did not respond to mechanical irritation, that appetite—mediated by the vagus—played an important secretory role, that the gastric glands were only excitable by specific substances, that fat inhibits gastric secretion, and that the secretions elicited by different foods differed distinctively in their amount and proteolytic power.54 Concerning the pancreatic gland, Pavlov had demonstrated the governing role of the vagus and sympathetic nerves, the specific secretory roles of hydrochloric acid and fat, the consistency of the secretory response to fat and various foods, the adaptation of pancreatic secretion over time to particular diets, and the role of enterokinase.55 Johansson provided similar lists of Pavlov’s contributions regarding the salivary glands (three discoveries), the gallbladder (four discoveries), and the passage of food from the stomach to the duodenum (two discoveries).56 These discoveries, united by Pavlov’s principles of specific excitability and purposiveness, had yielded a fundamentally new view of the digestive canal, which had been revealed as a sensitive, interconnected, and adaptive system.
Viewed against this background, the criticisms raised recently against Pavlov’s work seemed, at most, trivial. Bayliss and Starling’s discovery of a possible humoral mechanism of pancreatic secretion did not negate the importance of Pavlov’s nervous mechanisms. “Pavlov, so far as I can see, assumed a reflex mechanism on good grounds. There is no decisive evidence against this view.” Furthermore, “For the Nobel Committee, it should be sufficient to state that [Pavlov’s] actual discovery of the two exciting substances [hydrochloric acid and fat] cannot be contradicted, that this discovery is of the greatest importance for physiology, and that it forms the point of departure for discussions of the importance of so-called secretin.”57
Johansson directed his main fire against Popel’skii’s criticisms, which he treated with disdain. Like Mörner, Johansson did not have access to Popel’skii’s detailed critique, which was available only in Russian. He ignored Popel’skii’s criticism of Val’ter’s thesis (although this criticism had been important to Mörner the year before), dealing only with those directed against Vasil’ev, Iablonskii, and Lintvarev. Johansson concluded that the basic patterns in their data indeed supported Pavlov’s conclusions and that Popel’skii’s criticism was “illegitimate.” Furthermore, although Popel’skii “wants to insinuate that some data has been hidden,” the experimental protocols were fully reported in the dissertations and “one can fully follow the experiments.”58 (This was not, in fact, true.) Again invoking his authority as an eyewitness, Johansson expressed his own opinion on one scientific issue in dispute: “My view on this question, which I base not only upon the above-mentioned experiments [as reported in the published literature] but also upon the observations that I made myself during my visit to Pawlow’s laboratory with Tigerstedt, is that the pancreatic juice really does lose its proteolytic power when [the animal] is fed milk and bread for a long time. As for the other ferments, I believe that the experiments are noteworthy, but that further proof is required.”59
By virtue of his “pioneering operational and experimental methods” and his “comprehensive revision” of scientists’ understanding of the digestive canal, Pavlov was, then, most worthy of the Nobel Prize.60
A postscript written on this report in a different hand attested to the effectiveness of Johansson’s argument: “I agree to the above stated. K. A. H. Mörner.” Johansson had convinced Pavlov’s halfhearted critic of 1903 to support the Russian’s candidacy in 1904.
By the Committee’s final session, the field had been winnowed to two finalists: Pavlov and Koch. The major weaknesses in Koch’s candidacy were that his “fundamental, epoch-making discoveries” regarding cholera and typhoid had occurred long ago and that committee members considered his later contributions to be either derivative or untested. Koch’s advocate on the committee, Ernst Almquist, presented a strong argument for his favorite: Koch and Pavlov had each begun his research at about the same time, in the late 1870s, and each had “delivered one contribution after another to the solution of a complex and comprehensive question.” In each case, no single one of these contributions “are really worthy of a Nobel Prize, but together they constitute a great advance for science.” Koch had “established the foundations for the rational struggle against epidemics,” and although not one of his “beautiful discoveries after 1890” deserved a Nobel Prize, if his work was regarded as a whole—in the same manner as Johansson urged the committee to view Pavlov’s—it certainly did. “I find Koch’s work to be of greater importance,” Almquist concluded, “and give him my vote.”61
The other committee members had decided otherwise. The perfunctoriness of their remarks testified to the fact that the die was clearly cast. Citing Johansson’s report and “Prof. Mörner’s concurrence,” Sundberg voted for Pavlov, explaining that his “discoveries, and especially the general acknowledgement of these discoveries, are so contemporary...that they coincide with the spirit of [Nobel’s] testament.” Johansson voted without comment. Medin briefly alluded to Johansson’s and Mörner’s position, and to the lack of any “pioneering discovery” in Koch’s recent work, and he, too, voted for Pavlov. Mörner commented briefly about the datedness of Koch’s most original work, and cast a final vote for the Russian physiologist. The committee’s recommendation—by a vote of four to one—was endorsed by the Faculty Collegium on October 20, 1904.
On the following day, Mörner notified the new Nobel laureate of the award and its financial value (140,858 kroner, or 198,000 francs), invited him to Stockholm for the ceremony on December 10, and asked in what language (German, English, or French) he would address the Swedish Academy of Sciences.62
In her memoirs, Serafima recalled that he was “absolutely stunned, so unexpected was this for him.”
He had never thought that his work might be valued so highly, especially since [his] book...had enjoyed no success in Russia. Having myself always considered I. P. [Pavlov]’s work brilliant, I was delighted that it was finally being properly appreciated. I. P. was not happy with my attitude and said “You have created for yourself an idol and now enjoy kneeling before it. There is nothing special about my work. It consists wholly of the logical development of thought on the basis of conclusions from facts.”63
He was clearly enjoying his new role as the great man of science.
Tigerstedt invited the Pavlovs to spend a week with his family in Helsingfors on the way to Stockholm, and so—having “ordered an evening coat for I. P. and two dresses and a nice fur coat” for Serafima—they departed for a week of friendly evenings and formal receptions. The Pavlovs were feted no less generously in Stockholm, where they began what proved to be enduring relationships with the Mörners and with Sir William Ramsay, who shared that year’s Prize in Chemistry.64 There they also met Emmanuel Nobel, who had years earlier negotiated Pavlov’s first “Nobel prize”—the 10,000-ruble gift of 1893 that had financed the construction of his new lab and so had made possible the second Prize of 1904.
The ceremonies of December 1904 were a triumph for Pavlov and his country. The speeches hailing the Nobel laureates each ended with a climatic passage in the prizewinner’s native language. Mörner had learned enough Russian to conclude properly his review of Pavlov’s many contributions to digestive physiology, “which have accomplished a revolution and comprised an epoch in the history of that sphere of knowledge.”65 King Oscar II, who formally awarded the gold Nobel medallion on December 10, startled Pavlov by greeting him in Russian—“Kak Vashe zdorov’e, kak Vy pozhivaete?” (How is your health, how are you?) Emmanuel Nobel later confided to the Pavlovs, however, that the Russian Nobelist’s democratic attire had made a bad impression upon the king: “I fear your Pavlov,” he reportedly told Nobel—“he wears no orders and is probably a socialist.”66
Two days later, Pavlov addressed the Swedish Academy of Science in halting German. He devoted the first two-thirds of his presentation to a review of the digestive system as a purposive “series of chemical laboratories” governed by specific excitability and the omnipresent psyche. He then turned intensely to his new research on psychic secretion, to which he now referred as a conditional reflex. As in Madrid the year before, he spoke explicitly of his goal:
Essentially, only one thing in life is of real interest to us—our psychical experience. Its mechanism, however, was and still is shrouded in profound obscurity. All human resources—art, religion, literature, philosophy, and the historical sciences—all have joined in the attempt to throw light upon this darkness. But humanity has at its disposal yet another powerful resource—natural science with its strict objective methods. This science, as we all know, is achieving gigantic successes every day. The facts and conceptions that I have advanced at the end of this lecture constitute one of many attempts to study the mechanism of the higher vital processes in the dog...through the consistent application of a purely natural scientific manner of thinking.67
With the ceremonies behind them, the Pavlovs attended yet more receptions, enjoyed a performance of Eugene Onegin, and paid a memorable visit to Stockholm’s zoological garden. Finally, “exhausted by the endless festivities...we happily left for home”—and to the research that would raise him far above the status of a mere Nobel Prize winner to a cultural symbol of twentieth-century science.68