Profoundly researched, densely detailed and likely to be definitive
Nature
a colossal work of scholarship and imagination
Raymond Tallis, Book of the Year 2014, Times Literary Supplement
Daniel P. Todes achieves a level of mastery that transforms biography into history... an exemplary work of scholarship
Science, Stephen T. Casper
Well written, thoroughly researched and ... Read moreextremely readable...
Biologist
Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science Science is an exceptional scientific biography, but it is also a vivid portrait of its time and place. Todes wears his exhaustive research lightly, never burdening the reader with unnecessary or undigested detail. Unlike Pavlov's dogs, teased and drained into a state of perpetual appetite, the reader is left fully sated.
Australian Book Review
David Todes has spent more then twenty years with his subject, and has evidently approached his task with the same dedication that Pavlov kept up through his many decades in the lab. Tode's sources range from the whimsical and self-revealing journal with which Pavlov wooed his future wife in 1879 to NKVD surveillance reports on his mood more than half a century later, from documents on the student Pavlov's very first research into nervous control of the organs to taped interviews with his co-workers several decades after his death. The result is history of science at its intricate best.
Stephen Lovell, The Times Literary Supplement
magisterial biography
London Review of Books
Well written, thoroughly researched and extremely readable, the cost represents good value for money and Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science deserves a place on all good library shelves.
Sue Howarth, The Biologist
A shining example of an academic biography.
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
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