Home > Sections > Famous Scientists > Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Life Details
Born: May 1st, 1852. Died: October 17th, 1934
Introduction
A Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist and histologist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal investigated the central nervous system and was the forefather of neuroscience as we know it today.
Early Life
Born on May 1st, 1852 in Petilla de Aragón in Spain, he was on a different career path completely in his formal years, deciding he wanted to be an artist. He was apprenticed to a barber and a cobbler, and he showed he had a gift for draughtsmanship. He was persuaded by his father, who was the Professor of Applied Anatomy in the University of Sargossa, to study medicine.
Education
He became an army doctor from 1873 when he took his Licentiate in Medicine at Sargossa, and was involved in an expedition in 1874-75 to Cuba. He contracted Malaria and tuberculosis there, and returned home to become an assistant in the Faculty of Medicine at Saragossa in 1875. He had a successful career and was appointed many different director roles and obtained directorates in Medicine between 1877 and 1901.
Released Works
During this period, he began to publish scientific works. The most important ones include:
- Manual de Histologia normal y Técnica micrográfica (Manual of normal histology and micrographic technique) published in 1889, with a second edition in 1893.
- Manual de Anatomía patológica general (Manual of general pathological anatomy) published in 1890, with a third edition in 1900.
- Les nouvelles idées sur la fine anatomie des centres nerveux (New ideas on the fine anatomy of the nerve centres) published in 1894.
- Textura del sistema nervioso del hombre y de los vertebrados (Textbook on the nervous system of man and the vertebrates) published between 1897 and 1899.
- Die Retina der Wirbelthiere (The retina of vertebrates) published in 1894
All of these publications set the precedent of his work and outlined his ability to show understanding of how the nervous system worked in our body, as well as other vertebrate creatures. His work also included improving Golgi's work on stains to show a finer detailed structure of nervous tissue in the brain, making a gold stain in 1913.
Later Life
Cajal received many awards for his continued work. He gained honorary doctorates from the University of Cambridge, Würzburg and Clark University in the US. He was summoned to London to give a Croonian Lecture of the Royal Society, and other places around the world asked for lectures to be given on the structure of the human brain and on his latest research.
Cajal married Doña Silvería Fañanás García in 1879, and had four daughters and three sons.
He later died in Madrid in October 1834.
