Ladygina-Kots, Nadezhda Nikolaevna

Born May 6 (18), 1889, in Penza; died Sept. 3,1963, in Moscow. Soviet animal psychologist, doctor of biological sciences. Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1960).

Ladygina-Kots graduated from the Moscow Advanced Courses for Women in 1916 and from Moscow University in 1917. From 1913 she headed the animal psychology laboratory that she had founded at the Darwin Museum in Moscow. From 1945 she was a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. She studied the mental activities of apes, particularly anthropoids (chimpanzees), and other animals within the wide framework of comparative psychology, comparing their mental activities to those of children and giving special attention to cognitive capacities and intellect. Ladygina-Kots’ works demonstrated the qualitative differences between the psychology of animals and humans and made a significant contribution to animal psychology, general and comparative psychology, and anthropology. She was awarded the Order of Lenin and various medals.