Nadezhda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts (Надежда Николаевна Ладыгина-Котс; – ) was a Russian zoopsychologist and comparative psychologist best known for her work comparing human and chimpanzee behavior, emotion, and cognition. She is the author of several books on ape and monkey behavior and served as the co-director of the first natural history museum in Russia.
Early life and education
Ladygina was born in Penza, Russia on May 18, 1889. Her father was a music teacher and her mother did not have any formal education. After attending gymnasium, she was a student at the Moscow Higher Women's Courses/Moscow Advanced Courses for Women from 1913 until 1916. It was here that she met and married Alexander F. Kohts who taught biology. During her studies she founded the Psychological Laboratory of the Darwin Museum. She finished and received her degree in the biological sciences, with a concentration in comparative psychology, at Moscow University in 1917.
Career
Koht's primarily studied animal behavior and how it compared to that of humans. She served as the co-director of the Darwin Museum in Moscow and studied a variety of animals such as parrots, dogs, monkeys, and apes throughout her career.
Moscow's State Darwin Museum
The Darwin Museum, founded by A.F. Kohts with assistance from Nadia Kohts, was the first and only museum of natural history in Russia. It was derived from A.F. Kohts' teaching museum which was begun in 1907 at the Women's Higher Courses Institute of Moscow University. A.F. Kohts was trained as a taxidermist, and had collected specimens from several expeditions including to southern Siberia, and was greatly inspired by Charles Darwin's works. Therefore, the museum served as the foundation of his private collection of zoological taxidermy and scientific literature. The museum was arranged in an artistic manner, so as to display the works in a creative and informative way, but without too much textual information. The displays included staged taxidermy, paintings and drawings of plants, animals, and their habitats, reconstructive illustrations and sculpture representing prehistoric flora and fauna, and depictions of the lives of evolutionary theorists such as Charles Darwin himself. A.F. Kohts believed that this museum should depict natural history as an "exciting visual experience" for visitors in order to spark and stimulate visitors' imaginations while he also offered guided lecture tours to the public. A.F. Kohts taught courses for women at the Moscow University, lecturing on Darwin's work and supplementing them with visual aids from his collection.
Nadia Kohts primarily worked at and served as the co-director of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. She began as a student at the Moscow Higher Women's Courses and founded the Psychological Laboratory at the Darwin Museum. Kohts and her husband were both greatly interested in and based their work on Darwin's theory evolution. So, while her husband managed the museum, Kohts carried on psychological and comparative experiments, exploring the similarities and differences between human and animal behavior and intelligence. Her experiments are still regarded today as important and informative in the field of comparative and evolutionary psychology.
Because of the political climate in Russia, the Kohts' had to take certain precautions to protect themselves and their work. Russian geneticist Trofim Lysenko, who was a strong proponent of the inheritance of acquired traits and opponent to Mendelian genetics, had earned support of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Under Lysenko, Soviet scientists who refused to renounce Mendelian genetics had been dismissed, sent to labor camps, or even sentenced to death. Consequently, Nadia and her husband hid their literature and research documents among the taxidermy collection in the museum basement and strategically placed a large statue of Jean Baptiste Lamarck at the museum entrance.
Academic colleagues
Nadia Kohts' spent years corresponding with prominent psychologists of the time. One such colleague was Robert Yerkes, a comparative psychologist and ape researcher from Pennsylvania. Yerkes and his daughter visited and stayed with Kohts in Moscow in 1929 to discuss her ongoing project comparing chimpanzee and human toddler behavior. Yerkes and Kohts carried on correspondence and advised each other on their respective work until 1942, In 1930, Kohts had a bust of Yerkes made to place in the Darwin Museum, along with a copy she sent to Yerkes back in the US. Yerkes dedicated pages of his published works to Kohts and her research achievements.
