In honour of Ada Lovelace Day, I decided to rerun a post I had previously run on one of the unsung heroes of science that seem more common when the forgotten scientist in question happens to be a woman. Despite the amazing early research that she did in the fields of comparative psychology and primatology, Nadiya Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts remained virtually unknown outside of her native Russia until relatively recently.
Born in 1889, Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts received her degree from Moscow University in 1917 with a specialization in comparative psychology. She was still a student when she opened the Psychological Laboratory at the Darwin Museum that her husband, Alexander Fyodorovitch Kohts founded in 1907. The Darwin Museum, the only one of its kind in the world when it first opened, was intended as a showcase for Charles Darwin, his theory of evolution, and to host one of the best natural history collections in Russia. As one of the first lecturers on Darwin and evolution in Russia, Alexander Kohts became a prominent voice for science education and successfully managed to adjust to the radical changes following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Along with the various exhibits presenting the evolution of life, the museum also had a collection of live primates that became the basis of the comparative psychology research pioneered by his wife, Nadiya. The star primate at the museum was an infant chimpanzee named "Joni" who was purchased from Moscow animal traders. Joni's origins are still unknown and there were few international restrictions on animal poaching at the time.
From 1913 to 1916, Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts studied Joni in detail and made careful note of his cognitive and physical development. When Joni died of a respiratory in 1916, best estimates placed him at four years of age and Ladygina-Kohts' work remains the earliest description of a chimpanzee raised from infancy. Although she went on to do other work with primates and published extensively in Russian, German and French in the 1920s, Ladygina-Kohts is best known for the comparative study she did of Joni's early years versus her own son Roody (born in 1925). Inspired by Charles Darwin's 1872 book, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, the two-volume book that she published in 1935 became a classic in its own right. Titled Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child, the book featured texts and photographs comparing Joni and Roody including facial expressions, perceptual abilities, cognitive and emotional development.
Although parts of the book might not sit well with modern animal rights advocates (she often referred to Joni as "our little prisoner" and freely described the times when Joni was whipped as punishment for his misdeeds), Ladygina-Kohts' methods for testing Joni's conceptual abilities were ingenious. In one series of tests, she had Joni reach into a bag and select a specific object from several that were in the bag. Not only did this test Joni's ability to discriminate objects by touch but also prevented suggestions that she was providing Joni with visual cues via a Clever Hans effect. The book contains numerous other examples of Joni's ingenuity with different tasks.
Throughout her book, Ladygina-Kohts makes a convincing case for Joni's emotional development, including examples of his playfulness, curiosity, and need for affection. One volume includes line photographs of Joni and Roody sitting, walking, manipulating objects, making facial expressions, and doing the sorts of activities typical for young children. Although the book was originally written in Russian, the numerous photographs included English captions which led to them being independently printed in Western countries and becoming better known that the book from which they were taken. Ladygina-Kohts' descriptions of Joni's emotional dependence on her, the only mother that the infant chimpanzee could recall, helped portray Joni as far more than a simple animal and showed that he was capable of a wide range of emotions and cognitive abilities that were previously considered exclusive to humans.
In the introduction to her book, Ladygina-Kohts wrote that "the face is the window of the soul" and leads into a careful description of Joni's face and the marvelous range of facial expressions which he displayed. The book then followed with a description of chimpanzee physiology before going into different sections devoted to chimpanzee play, tool-using ability, imitative behaviour, the chimpanzee's language (both in terms of natural sounds and gestures made) as well as Joni's performance on a range of cognitive tasks. The book also describes attempts to train Joni in learning "human" activities such as drawing, using basic utensils, and socialization. Sections featuring Roody were primarily meant to provide a direct comparison between Joni and a human child of approximately the same age for instinctive behaviour, play, and emotional expression. She then capped off her book with a careful summary of the important similarities and differences between Joni and Roody and concluded that her own hope that a chimpanzee could be successfully trained to learn human language and behaviour was overly optimistic. While Roody showed normal human socialization and made good progress on various language and cognitive tasks, Joni seemed incapable of learning many of the same tasks. Ladygina-Kohts concluded her book by hinting that further research with chimpanzees might yet prove that they were capable of learning human capabilities.
In recognizing that her 1935 book was only a stepping-stone for further research into primate intelligence, she concluded her book with these words:
Could anybody come up to the base of a high mountain and climb straight to its top? The summit may seem very clear and close to that man, but trying to climb higher and higher, he may lose his wind and stop, unable to make the entire climb at a stretch. Coming closer to the apex, the man has to reject the straight and shortest way and elect a steep, winding, zigzagging path instead. Sometimes it appears to an observer that the traveler goes in circles or away from the destination, but the traveler knows that every step brings him closer to his goal. Instead of reproaching the tired traveler, it would be fair to wish him the strength and energy to complete his journey.
While Nadiya Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts' research brought her a brief flurry of international recognition, she largely faded into obscurity by the 1940s despite being recognized as one of the pioneers of comparative psychology along with Wolfgang Koehler, Robert Yerkes, and Winthrop and Luella Kellogg. Many of the insights in her 1935 book would predate later researchers, including Jane Goodall, by decades but even Russian scholars paid her little attention in later years and few of them visited the Kohts' Darwin Museum or her laboratory.
Although Robert Yerkes promoted the Kohts' work in his own 1929 book on the great apes, Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts and her husband were largely overlooked by Western psychologists for many years. Unfortunately, none of her work was in English and English-speaking psychologists were mostly limited to descriptions published by Yerkes and other researchers. As well, her conclusions were out of step with the rise of behaviorism in American psychology. Representing animals as virtual robots incapable of thoughts or feelings, the behaviourist perspective would take decades to be overturned.
According to a recent paper in History of Psychology however, she developed a correspondence in 1960 with Harry Harlow which likely came as a surprise to her. Not only was Harlow already well known for his social isolation experiments with rhesus monkeys but, with the Cold War was in full swing by then, correspondence with Western psychologists, especially American ones, was extremely rare. Still, Harlow was not completely familiar with her work (he misspelled her name at first) and there were no English translations of her books available at the time. Since Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts knew no English, the nine letters that they exchanged between 1960 and 1961 were written in French (which Harlow needed to have translated) although he had a staff member who read Russian. In addition to having her send copies of her books to him, she also arranged for Harlow to provide her with copies of his own research although many of them failed to arrive before her death. After receiving her books, Harlow wrote that "I have received, and greatly appreciate, copies of your books…these are priceless manuscripts and I shall use and cherish them throughout my life". He added that he had failed to give her enough credit for her work and they even made plans to visit their respective laboratories although her worsening heart condition made this impossible.
Nadiya Ladygina Koht's death in 1963 prevented her from receiving further international recognition. The 1935 Ladygina-Kohts book would only become widely known in the West with the 2002 translation of her work edited by Frans de Waal. With a forward by Allen and Beatrix Gardner, the 2002 translation provided a new look at the Kohts' early work in primatology and the special relationship that Nadiya had with Joni. Now that her 1935 book is recognized as an international classic, Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts has finally gained the audience that she deserved.
The Koht's Darwin Museum in Moscow (now the State Darwin Museum) is still one of the best science museums in Asia with a range of permanent and temporary exhibits designed to teach visitors about biodiversity, micro- and macroevolution, as well as the development of human and animal behaviour. The museum represents an ongoing tribute to the rich legacy that Alexander and Nadiya Ladygina-Kohts left behind.
Comments