Aleksey Alekseyevich Ukhtomsky

About museum

Aleksey Alekseyevich Ukhtomsky – a Russian and Soviet physiologist, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and the creator of the theory of the dominant. Ukhtomsky was born on 13 (25) June 1875 in the village of Vosloma in the Yaroslavl Governorate into the family of a former military officer. At thirteen he entered the Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps, where he became interested in philosophy, psychology, ethics, and literature. Later, as a student in the literary section of the Moscow Theological Academy, his attention was drawn to physiology.

After graduating from the academy, Ukhtomsky declined a church career and decided to devote himself to the study of physiology. He enrolled as an auditor at the Oriental Faculty of Saint Petersburg University, and later transferred to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the same university. His main scientific achievement was the discovery of the principle of the dominant — a theory explaining many aspects of human behavior and mental processes. This doctrine went beyond pure physiology and became a distinct direction in philosophical anthropology and psychology.

For his scientific work Ukhtomsky was awarded the Lenin Prize and was elected a corresponding member, and then, in 1935, a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Aleksey Alekseyevich Ukhtomsky died on 31 August 1942 in besieged Leningrad.