Maria Alexsandrovna Sechenova was the daughter of Alexander Afnasevich Obruchev, a landowner of Tver Oblast and a famous army general in Russia.
To become independent and to attend university, she organized a dummy marriage in August 1861 to her parents' home teacher, medical student, P. I. Bokov, who later became a popular doctor in Moscow.
After her arranged marriage with Bokov, Sechenova and Nadezhda Suslova, the first Russian female to receive a doctoral degree, began studying at St.
[4] Before leaving Europe and returning to Russia, she published the study, “A way to produce artificial color blindness”, under Sechenov's guidance.
[3][5] At the beginning of his novel, Chernyshevsky notes, “... all the essential in my story are facts experiences by my good friends.” (Kirsanov - Sechenov, Vera Pavlovna - Maria Alexandrovna, Lopukhov - Bokov).