Ivan Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell and became the most famous experimental psychologist in history. But his final act was the most Pavlovian of all — as he lay dying of pneumonia on February 27, 1936, he dictated his own symptoms to a student, treating his death as one last experiment. The man who spent his life studying conditioned reflexes refused to stop observing even as his own body shut down.

This episode traces Pavlov from his seminary childhood through the digestive research that won the Nobel Prize, the conditioned reflex experiments that changed psychology, and the deathbed dictation that turned his own dying into data.

• Pavlov’s seminary upbringing and the turn to physiology that led to his Nobel Prize in digestion
• The famous conditioning experiments — bells, dogs, saliva, and the reflexes that rewrote psychology
• His complicated relationship with the Soviet state and the privilege his fame afforded him
• The deathbed dictation — observing and recording his own death as a final scientific act