Although Jerzy Konorski always regarded himself as a neurophysiologist, his empirical and theoretical legacy has been in psychology. Like those of the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, Konorski's theories, although expressed in terms of speculative physiology, were largely based on behavioral experiments and are readily recast into psychological concepts. And it is in this form that his ideas have come to exert a preeminent influence over the contemporary study of associative learning through conditioning.

Konorski was born in the Polish city of Lódz. From his earliest student days, he was fascinated by brain function, and while studying medicine at Warsaw University, he came into contact with Pavlov's work. Although inspired by Pavlov's ideas, he doubted that Pavlovian mechanisms could explain all forms of acquired behavior, especially instrumental or operant conditioning. Along with a fellow student, Stephan Miller, he set up a makeshift conditioning laboratory...