Anokhin, Petr Kuzmich

Anokhin, Petr Kuz’mich 

Born Jan. 14 (26), 1898, in Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd. Soviet physiologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR since 1966; member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (AMN SSSR) since 1945.

A graduate of the Leningrad Institute of Medical Sciences (1926), Anokhin began to work in the Brain Institute under the direction of V. M. Bekhterev in 1921. Between 1922 and 1930 he worked in I. P. Pavlov’s laboratory at the Military Medical Academy. From 1930 to 1934 he was a professor in the department of physiology at the Gorky Medical Institute. During 1934–44, Anokhin headed a department at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine in Moscow and during 1944–50, at the Institute of Physiology of the AMN SSSR. He became director of the Institute of Physiology in 1946. In 1950, Anokhin became head of the Neurophysiological Laboratory of the AMN SSSR and later also head of the department of neurophysiology at the Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology of the AMN SSSR. He has been teaching in institutions of higher learning in Moscow since 1936 and has been head of a department since 1955.

Anokhin’s principal works have been devoted to the study of the activity of the total organism, especially the brain, based on the functional-system theory which he worked out. The application of this theory to the evolution of function has made it possible for Anokhin to formulate the concept of systemogenesis as a general principle of the evolutionary process. He was awarded the I. P. Pavlov Gold Medal in 1968, three orders, and also some medals.

WORKS

Problema tsentra i periferii v fiziologii nervnoi deiatel’nosti. Editor-in-chief, P. Anokhin. Gorky, 1935. (Collection of works.)
“Sistemogenez kak obshchaia zakonomernost’ evoliutsionnogo protsessa.” Btulleten’ eksperimental’noi biologii i meditsiny, 1948, vol. 26, no. 8.
“Teoriia funktsional’noi sistemy kak predposylka k postroeniiu fiziologicheskoi kibernetiki.” In Biologicheskie aspekty kibernetiki. Moscow, 1962.
“Kibernetika i integrativnaia deiatel’nost’ mozga.” Voprosy psikhologii, 1966, no. 3.
Biologiia i neirofiziologiia uslovnogo refleksa. Moscow, 1968.