Santiago Ramón y Cajal

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For other uses, see Ramón y Cajal (disambiguation) and other uses of the term.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Born(1852-05-01)1 May 1852
Petilla de Aragón (Spain)
Died17 October 1934(1934-10-17) (aged 82)
Madrid (Spain)
Resting place
Almudena Cemetery
Alma materUniversity of Zaragoza
OccupationsMedicine (histology and neuroanatomy)
Employer(s)University of Valencia, University of Barcelona, Complutense University of Madrid, Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios.
Known forHis contributions to the field of neurohistology (neuron doctrine)
AwardsNobel Prize in Medicine (1906)
Life Senator of the Kingdom
In office
February 14, 1910 – September 15, 1923
Senator in the Cortes
In office
December 6, 1908 – February 14, 1910
Constituencythe Central University of Madrid
Signature

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Petilla de Aragón, Navarre; May 1, 1852 – Madrid, October 17, 1934) was a Spanish physician and scientist, specializing in histology and anatomical pathology.

Frequently cited as the father of neuroscience,[1] he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906 with Camillo Golgi "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system".[2]

A humanist as well as a scientist, Ramón y Cajal is considered the head of the so-called Generation of Sages (Generación de Sabios).

Name

The name he himself used was sometimes "Santiago Ramón Cajal", but at other times, for example in his book Recuerdos de mi vida (Recollections of My Life),[3] he used "Santiago Ramón y Cajal", adding "y" (and) between his two surnames. This way of naming has a tradition in Aragon and avoids misunderstandings, since his first surname is also a given name. In many foreign circles he is referred to only by his second surname, "Cajal". His second given name was Felipe, and his full name was therefore Santiago Felipe Ramón Cajal.

Childhood and youth

Ramón y Cajal at about one year of age. Hanging from his neck is a "mordedor" (teether), a forerunner of the pacifier.

He was born in Petilla de Aragón —a Navarrese enclave located in the Province of Zaragoza—, the son of Antonia Cajal and Justo Ramón Casasús, both from Larrés.[4] He spent his childhood amid continual changes of residence through various Aragonese towns, accompanying his father, who was a physician-surgeon; thus, when he was barely two years old the family left Petilla de Aragón to move to Larrés, his father's village, and from there to Luna (1855), to Valpalmas (1856) and to Ayerbe (1860).

He completed his primary studies with the Piarists of Jaca and his secondary studies at the institute of Huesca, in a period marked by social unrest, the exile of Isabella II and the First Republic, proclaimed just as he was finishing his secondary studies in Huesca. According to his own biographical accounts, Ramón y Cajal showed from an early age a vocation for the plastic arts, especially drawing; in them he also comments on his life as a student, his mischievous nature and his refusal to learn by rote, two circumstances that earned him the enmity of the friars who taught him, in a tradition of violent and authoritarian methods (la letra con sangre entra, "learning enters with blood"). In that period he began his fondness for the mountains, and his proverbial defense of a healthy life in contact with nature.[5]

Adult life and professional career

He studied Medicine in Zaragoza, where his whole family moved in 1870. Ramón y Cajal focused on his university studies with success and, after graduating in Medicine in June 1873, at the age of twenty-one, he was called up in the so-called Castelar levy, the military service ordered by the celebrated politician, at that time president of the short-lived First Republic.

Physician in the Cuban war (1873–1875)

Santiago Ramón Cajal, medical captain in Cuba, portrayed by Izquierdo Vives in 1874. (Museo del Ejército de España).

His first months in the military were spent in Zaragoza, and shortly afterwards competitive examinations were called for the Military Health Corps, in which, among a hundred candidates for thirty-two posts, he obtained No. 6. He was posted as 'second physician' (lieutenant) to the Burgos regiment, quartered in Lérida, with the mission of defending the Plains of Urgell from the attacks of the Carlists.

During that time, Cuba, still a Spanish province, was waging a war for its independence, known as the Ten Years' War. In 1874 Ramón y Cajal was posted to Cuba with the rank of captain, since transfer Overseas entailed promotion to the next military rank.

Ramón y Cajal was attracted by the marvelous parks and gardens of Havana, as well as by the tropical flora in general, for he had become fascinated by it in his readings. It took him little time to verify, however, that the admired and dreamed-of manigua was unbearable for Europeans. The absence of the exuberant fauna and flora he had imagined, together with the omnipresent mosquitoes, spreaders of the dreaded malaria, completely undid the romantic and adventurous ideal of the island that Cajal had formed.

His father had obtained for him some letters of recommendation, so that he might have a more favorable posting, which he refused to use; perhaps this influenced his being sent to the worst medical posting possible: the infirmary of Vistahermosa, in the Camagüey Province, in the middle of the swampy manigua. It was a facility inadequate to accommodate the large number of soldiers sick with malaria and dysentery. Very soon the young physician fell ill and, after a first convalescence in Puerto Príncipe, he was transferred to the infirmary of San Isidro, even more unhealthy than that of Vistahermosa.[6]

The experiences with the administrative and military system that Ramón y Cajal lived through during this overseas stay were as bitter for him as the illnesses he contracted there. Cajal had to confront administrative chaos and the incompetence and immorality of certain officials and some army commanders, from the commander of the post to the cooks and part of the officers of the detachment, who were in the habit of taking for themselves the food and resources that the sick and wounded lacked. These bitter experiences led him to request leave to abandon Cuba, which was granted on May 30, 1875 after he was diagnosed with "severe malarial cachexia" and declared "unfit for campaign". "He arrived in Spain in June 1875 through the port of Santander, Cantabria, turned into a human ruin, in no way resembling the vigorous and athletic young man who had arrived in Cuba a year earlier".[7]

To recover half of his back pay he had to bribe the official on duty since, otherwise, it threatened to be delayed indefinitely. However, "it is worth pointing out here that part of the savings from his stay in Cuba were the financial bases that allowed Cajal to acquire the microscope, a microtome, chemical reagents and dyes with which, upon his return, he set up a modest laboratory in which he would begin his histological research". The return to Spain and the care lavished on him by his mother and sisters progressively restored Santiago Ramón y Cajal's health and allowed him to resume his academic career, on the way to teaching (1876) and the doctorate (1876–1877).[8]

Beginnings of his research vocation

Self-portrait of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, doctoral student in Zaragoza (c. 1876).

The year 1875 also marked the beginning of his doctorate and of his scientific vocation. Santiago bought his first microscope before winning, in 1876, a post as on-call assistant; he also attended his father's private surgical patients, at the Hospital Nuestra Señora de Gracia of Zaragoza.

He obtained his doctorate on June 26, 1877, at the age of twenty-five, with the thesis entitled Pathogenesis of inflammation, at the Central University, today's Complutense University of Madrid.[9][nota 1]

Also in 1877 his admission is documented into the Masonic lodge Caballeros de la Noche, belonging to the Grande Oriente Lusitano, with member number 96 and the symbolic name of Averroes, the Andalusi physician.[10]

In these years a period of ups and downs began for Ramón y Cajal, with a terrible 1878, marked by the illness of tuberculosis, and an 1879 of achievements, with his obtaining the post of Director of Anatomical Museums of Zaragoza and his wedding on July 19, for love and against the opinion of his parents and friends, to Silveria Fañanás García, with whom, over fifty-one years of tranquil and collaborative life together, he would have seven children: Santiago, Felina (Fe), Pabla Vicenta, Jorge,[11] Enriqueta, María del Pilar and Luis, of whom two (Santiago and Enriqueta) died before him.

He won the chair of Descriptive Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine of Valencia in 1882, where he was able to study the cholera epidemic that struck the city in 1885.[12]

Discovery of neurons

In 1887, he moved to Barcelona to occupy the chair of Histology created at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona.[13] It was in 1888, described by Cajal himself as his "peak year", that he discovered the mechanisms governing the morphology and connective processes of the nerve cells of the grey matter of the cerebrospinal nervous system.

In May 1888 he published in the Revista Trimestral de Histología Normal y Patológica that brain tissues were not composed of continuous connections, as had been believed until then owing to the research of Camillo Golgi, which, although it made it possible to see nerves and brain tissues, lacked the precision to reveal the neurons.[14]

His theory was accepted in 1889 at the Congress of the German Anatomical Society, held in Berlin.

In 1891, Wilhelm Waldeyer was the first to formulate the neuronal principle; he reviewed the anatomy of the nerve cell and coined the word neuron. The first article in which a principle appears that was later raised to the level of doctrine, and which places neurons as the elementary unit of the nervous system, was published by Waldeyer on December 10, 1891.[15]

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's structural scheme of the nervous system as an agglomerate of independent and defined units came to be known as the "neuron doctrine", and prominent within it is the law of dynamic polarization, a model capable of explaining the unidirectional transmission of the nerve impulse.

In 1892 he occupied the chair of Normal Histology and Histochemistry and Pathological Anatomy at the Central University of Madrid. He succeeded in having the government create in 1901 a modern Laboratory of Biological Research,[16] in which he worked until 1922, the year of his retirement and the moment at which he went on to continue his work at the Cajal Institute, already so named in his honor, where he would maintain his scientific work until his death.

Between 1897 and 1904 he published, in installments, his magnum opus Histología del sistema nervioso del hombre y de los vertebrados (Histology of the Nervous System of Man and Vertebrates).

Portrait of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, by Joaquín Sorolla in 1906. 91 x 127.5 cm. Oil on canvas. Museo Provincial de Zaragoza.
Drawing of the axial section of the retina, by Ramón y Cajal, published in his manual Histologie du Système Nerveux de l'Homme et des Vertébrés, in the French edition of 1911.
No. 64 Calle de Alfonso XII in Madrid, where Cajal lived from 1912 until his death.

Thanks to Ramón y Cajal's detailed histological examinations, the synaptic cleft was discovered, a space of between 20 and 40 nanometers that separates neurons; this space suggested communication by means of chemical messengers that crossed the cleft and allowed communication between neurons, studies continued by the English physiologist Henry Hallett Dale, who discovered the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine,[17] thus laying the foundations for understanding how most existing drugs, and those that would be developed later, work at the level of both the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system.

He proposed the existence of dendritic spines, a small protuberance on the membrane of the dendritic tree of certain neurons where, typically, the synapse with an axonal bouton of another neuron takes place, and on occasion several axons make contact. Proof of this came only once electron microscopy had been developed during the second decade of the 20th century.[18]

Santiago Ramón y Cajal also discovered the neural growth cone, a conical expansion of the distal end of developing axons and dendrites, described for the first time by him, which constitutes the extension of a developing axon in order to achieve an appropriate synaptic connection throughout the nervous system.

After creating excellent descriptions of neuronal structures and their connectivity, and providing detailed descriptions of cell types, he discovered a new type of cell, the interstitial cell of Cajal (ICC). These cells are found interspersed among the neurons embedded within the smooth muscles lining the intestine, serving as generator and pacemaker of the slow waves of contraction that move material along the gastrointestinal tract, mediating neurotransmission from motor neurons to the soft cells of the smooth muscle.

Awards and honors during his lifetime

After his return from the Berlin congress, a number of other triumphs and invitations came to him, from the Moscow International Prize (awarded during the 13th International Congress of Medicine in Paris, 1900),[19] to the Helmholtz Medal (1905),[20] including appointments as doctor honoris causa by the universities of Clark, Boston, the Sorbonne[21] and Cambridge in 1899, the same year in which he published the third installment of his Textura del sistema nervioso del hombre y los vertebrados, which would be completed in 1900 and 1901 and whose French translation contributed greatly to his international renown.[22] Following the award of the Moscow Prize, and responding in part to a widespread clamor among the citizenry and the press, the Spanish government, as already mentioned, would create for him the Laboratory of Biological Research,[23] which gave rise to the Spanish School of Neurohistology, one of the most important scientific centers in the country.

His medals and prizes also include, chronologically, the Fauvelle Prize (April 18, 1896), awarded by the Société de Biologie of Paris; the Rubio Prize (1897), awarded by the Royal Academy of Madrid for his Manual de Histología; the grand cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso XII[24] (June 20, 1900) and the grand cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic[25] (February 28, 1901); the Martínez y Molina Prize (January 25, 1902, of 4000 pesetas, awarded together with his brother Pedro for the work Centros sensoriales en el hombre y animales); the National Order of the Legion of Honor of the French with the rank of Commander (1914); the Cross of the German imperial order "Pour le Mérite" (1915);[26] the Echegaray Medal, awarded by the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (May 7, 1922); in 1922 he was granted the honorary doctorate by the National Autonomous University of Mexico; and the Plus Ultra Medal (April 1926).[27][28]

He was appointed life senator in 1908.[29]

The Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize diploma awarded to Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Exhibited at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid.

His works and contributions to neuroscience —disseminated in Europe by his friend the Swiss anatomist Rudolph Albert von Kölliker— were recognized in 1906 with the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, an award he shared with the Italian researcher Camillo Golgi, whose staining method Ramón y Cajal applied for years,[30] but with whose theses, curiously, he did not agree and never had.[nota 2]

Regarding what that first Spanish Nobel Prize in the Sciences meant, two opinions may be compared: that of Ortega y Gasset, who held that the case of Ramón y Cajal was a disgrace for Spain rather than a source of pride, because it constituted an exception. Years later, Severo Ochoa, another Nobel laureate, concluded that research in biology and medicine in Spain was poor, but without Cajal it would have been nonexistent.

After the Nobel, Cajal published some biographical works, in addition to his Estudios sobre la degeneración y regeneración del sistema nervioso (Studies on the Degeneration and Regeneration of the Nervous System; Madrid, 1913–1914). His last scientific article, a summation of his ideas, was ¿Neuronismo o reticularismo?: Las pruebas objetivas de la unidad anatómica de las células nerviosas (Neuronism or Reticularism? The Objective Evidence of the Anatomical Unity of Nerve Cells).[32] It had been commissioned by a German journal, but the four-year delay in receiving the proofs from Germany made Ramón y Cajal fear that he would die before correcting it and seeing it in print, as indeed happened. Without waiting for the Germans' reply, the scientist proceeded to shorten his text and publish it in Spain.[33] This scientific summation also appeared in French[34] and, posthumously, in Germany (1935). Later, in 1954, on the occasion of the first centenary of the birth of its founder, there was an edition prepared by the Cajal Institute.

Last years

Tomb of Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Monument to Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the Retiro of Madrid, work of the sculptor Victorio Macho (1926). Of it Cajal himself said ironically: "... I have never undressed in front of any man".[35]


Don Santiago retired on October 11, 1922. The University of Zaragoza, where he had studied Medicine, had commissioned a sculpture of the Spanish Nobel laureate from the Valencian sculptor Mariano Benlliure, with the idea of installing it in the Faculty of Medicine to coincide with the start of the 1922–1923 academic year. However, the carving of the sculpture was not ready for that day, and the tribute was held before a provisional plaster copy.

Benlliure considered his work finished in 1923, but the solemn inauguration did not take place until February 26, 1925. That day King Alfonso XIII arrived in Zaragoza by train and personally unveiled the statue. It is located on the staircase of the Paraninfo, where the seated life-size figure of the sage, sculpted in white marble, dressed in the gown of a professor and with his noble head uncovered, rests his left hand on a book.

The following year, 1926, a second Monument to Santiago Ramón y Cajal would also be inaugurated by Alfonso XIII, the work of the chisel of Victorio Macho, this time in the open air and in Madrid, on the Paseo de Venezuela in Retiro Park.[nota 3]

In August 1930, the death of his wife from tuberculosis was a heavy blow for Cajal. In spite of this, in his last years he continued working, preparing publications and new editions, and devoted himself to his students. Several of them (especially his favorite disciple since 1905, Jorge Francisco Tello, who had succeeded him in his chair and in the direction of the Institute), at the express wish of Ramón y Cajal himself, accompanied him at his death, on October 17, 1934, after the worsening of an intestinal ailment that weakened his heart. Very shortly afterwards his autobiography El mundo visto a los ochenta años (The World as Seen at Eighty) was published, which he had finished and corrected shortly before. His remains rest, together with those of his wife, in the Almudena Cemetery of Madrid.[36][37][nota 4]

On the nightstand, next to the bed, there was a calendar open at the day's date: October 17, 1934. Fe Ramón Fañanás took up the pen left there by her father and wrote: "This day, at a quarter to eleven at night, my father died".Loren 1982, p. 308

Bequests

Santiago Ramón y Cajal and his wife arranged four bequests of 25,000 pesetas each, from whose income four prizes would be awarded, two annual (to the best student of Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zaragoza and to the best student of Histology and Pathological Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine of Madrid) and two biennial (one to the best published memoir on Pathological Anatomy, Histology or Bacteriology and another to the best published work on comparative Psychology in any group of animals or of a particular species).[38]

The honesty of Ramón y Cajal

"Let us love the fatherland, even if only for its deserved misfortunes."[39]

In addition to his virtues as a scientist and as a human being, Cajal was an unusual example of honesty and of well-understood patriotism. These three examples will suffice:

  • When he was appointed director of the Laboratory of Biological Research, the Government assigned him a salary of ten thousand pesetas a year. Ramón y Cajal asked that it be reduced to six thousand.
  • He turned down the post of Minister of Health and Public Instruction, and if he accepted the appointment as life senator proposed by Canalejas, it was because it was unpaid (it carried no financial allowance).
  • While president of the JAE,[nota 5] he sent his son Jorge, a researcher like himself, abroad, paying the expenses out of his own pocket. Asked why he had not supported him with a grant, as was customary, especially since he was his son, Cajal replied: "For that very reason, because he is my son".[40]

Posthumous recognitions

Tribute to Santiago Ramón y Cajal on a stamp[41] of the Second Spanish Republic, 1934
50-peseta banknote, issued by the Bank of Spain on July 22, 1935, during the Second Republic, in tribute to Ramón y Cajal.

In 1954, the histologists of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana, in Cuba, unveiled a plaque in the histology laboratories of the ICBP Victoria de Girón, along with other activities on the occasion of the centenary of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.[nota 6]

Sculpture by Eduardo Carretero (1977), in the landscaped grounds of the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital in Madrid.
Bust of Santiago Ramón y Cajal next to the Faculty of Medicine of Zaragoza where he studied.

On April 1, 1952, on the occasion of the tributes for the first centenary of his birth, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (setting aside the fact that Cajal had been a declared Freemason) granted him, posthumously, the title of 1st Marquis of Ramón y Cajal.[42][43]

In 1973, the International Astronomical Union named the lunar crater Cajal in his memory.[44] Likewise, the asteroid (117413) Ramonycajal bears this name in his memory.[45]

In October 1977, the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital was inaugurated in Madrid, in whose gardens a monumental head, the work of Eduardo Carretero, was installed.[nota 7]

On October 22, 1984, in the presence of his daughter María de los Ángeles and at the time when Enrique Tierno Galván was Mayor of Madrid, a plaque commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Santiago Ramón y Cajal was unveiled on the façade of the house at No. 64 Calle de Alfonso XII, where the scientist had resided during the last twenty-two years of his life in Madrid, since 1909.[46][nota 8]

In 2002 the Diputación General de Aragón celebrated the 150th anniversary of his birth with various events, lectures, routes, a traveling exhibition, and so on.[47] Perhaps the most important event of the so-called "Cajal Year" was the Great Cajal Congress, held in Zaragoza from October 1 to 3, 2003, attended by renowned scientists, national and international. Also in Zaragoza, his name was given to the Ramón y Cajal Specialty Medical Center.[nota 9]

In 2009, on the 75th anniversary of his death, Radio Nacional de España gathered several minutes of sound recordings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal; in one of them he speaks about neurons and their inability to multiply.[48]

On December 10, 2011, the Santiago Ramón y Cajal Honorary and Multidisciplinary Chair was created at the University of Medical Sciences of Havana.[49]

In 2019 the Medical Association of Madrid announced that it would devote 1,500 square meters to the creation of a Ramón y Cajal Museum-Chair. However, it did not confirm whether it would have his archive.[50]

Every year, the "Ramón y Cajal" program of Spain's Ministry of Science offers some 200 contracts for the incorporation of doctors into the Spanish university system after a rigorous competition of merits.

Correspondence of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

File:BLOTTA Ramon y Cajal Hosp Cen,.jpg
Bust of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, sculpted in white marble by Erminio Blotta (1892–1976) in 1922; courtyard of the Hospital Provincial del Centenario, Rosario, Argentina.

On December 6, 2014, the Spanish newspaper El País published the news that, while carrying out the research necessary for the edition of the Spanish scientist's correspondence, the author of that work, Juan Antonio Fernández Santarén, discovered that a total of approximately twelve thousand documents were missing (most of them sold) after having been surreptitiously removed from the Cajal Institute of the CSIC.[51]

As a teacher

His autobiographical books and the biographies by those who knew him agree that there was perhaps only one endeavor equal to his determination as a researcher: that of teacher. His students, who with his affection and guidance became new sages and successors of his work, were Ramón y Cajal's second family. His was a mixed philosophy of pedagogy, patriotism and tenacity:

Spain will not reach its full cultural and political flourishing as long as the teachers of all levels do not succeed in producing, in sufficient quantity, the Spaniard we so badly need, that is, a human type so impersonal through self-denial, so firm and upright in character, so tolerant and open to all ideas, so hard-working and constant in his endeavor, so keenly sensitive to our misfortunes that, reacting vigorously against the causes of our backwardness and our errors, he devotes the best of his energies and his understanding to the prosperity of the country, to the service of the State and to the exaltation of the Nation.[52][53]

As a writer

  • Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica (Rules and Advice on Scientific Research), published in 1897 and one of Cajal's most widely circulated works. Subtitled Los tónicos de la voluntad (The Tonics of the Will), it was translated into German (1933), Japanese (1958), Hungarian, Portuguese and English (1951) and Romanian (1967). In it one can read everything from advice on choosing a suitable wife for a young researcher to maxims such as this: "For scientific work the means are almost nothing and the man is almost everything".
  • Recuerdos de mi vida (Recollections of My Life), a literary autobiography, which was published in separate chapters in the Revista de Aragón between 1901 and 1904, and served as the basis for the later editions of his collection of autobiographical texts.[54]
  • Cuentos de vacaciones (Vacation Stories), subtitled Narraciones pseudocientíficas (Pseudoscientific Narratives) and first published in 1905. The book is made up of five stories entitled: "A secreto agravio, secreta venganza", "El fabricante de honradez", "La casa maldita", "El pesimista corregido" and "El hombre natural y el hombre artificial".
  • Psicología de Don Quijote y el quijotismo (Psychology of Don Quixote and Quixotism), a brief literary essay he wrote as a speech at the Faculty of Medicine of San Carlos on March 9, 1905.
  • Charlas de café (pensamientos, anécdotas y confidencias) (Café Chats: Thoughts, Anecdotes and Confidences), published in 1920 as Chácharas de café, a book of maxims and aphorisms, very popular, as shown by the ten editions it had already reached by 1978.[55]
  • El mundo visto a los ochenta años (The World as Seen at Eighty; subtitled Impresiones de un arterioesclerótico, Impressions of an Arteriosclerotic), Cajal's last literary work, completed in 1934, shortly before his death. It is divided into three parts: "Delirio de la velocidad" (Delirium of Speed), "Degeneración del arte" (Degeneration of Art) and "Consuelos de la senectud" (Consolations of Old Age).

As a photographer

The researcher with his children: Fe, Santiago, Jorge and Paula, in Barcelona (1889).

The first record that exists of Santiago Ramón y Cajal in relation to the optical basis of photography dates from when, as a child, he was punished by being locked in the classroom at his school in Ayerbe. In the darkened classroom, Cajal discovered that the light entering through a crack in the shutter projected onto the ceiling, upside down and in its natural colors, the image of the people passing outside (following the effect of the camera obscura); this observation did not go unnoticed, being described later in his memoirs Recuerdos de mi vida. Mi infancia y juventud.[56]

Ramón y Cajal was eighteen years old the first time he witnessed the miracle of silver bromide; it happened in Huesca, watching some itinerant photographers photographing the vaults of the church of Santa Teresa. His passion for and research into innovative photographic techniques led him in 1878 to manufacture plates that needed only three seconds (instead of the usual three minutes of wet collodion plates) and improved the sensitivity of snapshots. His trial report on a bullfight was a great success in the professional circles of Zaragoza; but no partner emerged to capitalize on the invention and its manufacture, and when he decided to develop it himself, news reached him that Edison had just patented an apparatus based on the same principles.

Another invention of Cajal's, based on photographic emulsion techniques, was the improvement of Thomas Alva Edison's gramophone (or phonograph), which, despite the improvements by the Italian Gianni Bettini, did not reproduce the voice well. The restless Spanish researcher devised recording sound waves in a flat plane, tracing on a glass or metal disc covered with wax a concentric line that improved the timbre of the voice and amplified it. But he could not find a precision mechanic who understood his idea and would build the metal disc, so Cajal abandoned the project.[57]

In 1890, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was appointed Honorary President of the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid, and in 1912 he published the book Fotografía de los colores, bases científicas y reglas prácticas (Color Photography: Scientific Bases and Practical Rules), giving notice of the future of chromatic (color) photography. Hundreds of stereoscopic photographs exposed on glass plates are preserved.

Disciples

Although the Civil War dispersed most of his collaborators, many of them subjected to ideological purging and dismissed, like Jorge Francisco Tello (1880–1958), when chairs were distributed more on political than scientific merit, some managed to continue their work abroad or, with great difficulty, within the country. Nicolás Achúcarro (1880–1918) developed an important neuron staining method and made contributions to the study of various nervous pathologies. Pío del Río Hortega (1882–1945) discovered microglia, the cells of nervous tissue that fulfill various auxiliary functions in the central nervous system. Fernando de Castro Rodríguez (1896–1967) carried out works that, although belatedly recognized, laid the basis for numerous studies on the ultimate mechanisms of the chemoreceptors he himself had discovered, and Rafael Lorente de Nó (1902–1990) was one of the most important neurophysiologists in the world.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ His father Justo Ramón Casasús, a model of tenacity for his son Santiago, obtained his doctorate the following year, in 1878, with the thesis Consideraciones sobre la doctrina organicista.
  2. ↑ Santiago Loren devotes a chapter of his biography of Santiago Ramón y Cajal to the course of the presentation of the Nobel he shared with Camillo Golgi, reproducing fragments of Cajal's speech, in which the Spanish scientist treated the Italian with exquisite etiquette and respect, an attitude that was at no time reciprocated by Golgi, who made a shameful display of arrogance that was very unscientific and of scant human stature.[31]
  3. ↑ It has been written that, once the monument was inaugurated, Cajal never again entered what had been his favorite park. The sculpture was the motif chosen for the reverse of the 50-peseta banknotes issued by the Bank of Spain in 1935, the year following his death (J. Fernández Santarén et al., 2006, p. 82 and image).
  4. ↑ Ramón y Cajal, in one of his wills, had written: "My remains shall rest in the common grave, content to dissolve myself in this beloved land of Spain, mingled among the humblest of my fellow citizens." But when Silveria, his wife, died first, he modified the will as follows: "My burial shall be modest and secular, next to my wife and, if not, in the civil cemetery next to Azcárate". (in Junquera, ref. p. 248).
  5. ↑ The Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (JAE, Board for the Extension of Studies and Scientific Research) was an institution created in 1907, within the framework of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, to promote research and scientific education in Spain. It was presided over by Santiago Ramón y Cajal from its foundation until his death in 1934. It was dismantled in 1939 after the Republican defeat in the Civil War, and from its structure the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) was created.
  6. ↑ Referred to in the book by Manuel Monteros Valdivieso. Likewise, on October 17, 2007, on the occasion of the 73rd anniversary of his death, the website of the Cuban histologists was inaugurated on Cuba's health network.Website of the health institutions of Cuba
  7. ↑ There is another similar one at the headquarters of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid.
  8. ↑ On October 25, 1906, when he received the telegram informing him of the award of the Nobel Prize, he was living on Calle del Príncipe at the corner of Huertas, in the so-called Barrio de las Musas. Since his arrival in Madrid from Barcelona he had lived in several apartments on Calle de Atocha, until in 1898 he earned enough to acquire a small plot of land on Calle Almansa, in the lower area of Cuatro Caminos, at that time almost uninhabited (today roughly at the junction with Avenida de Pablo Iglesias), and to build himself a "modest villa", in which he himself recalls in his memoirs that he was able to recover from his heart ailments. Owing to the heat and the distances, he lived there barely two years, and moved to the aforementioned apartment on Calle de las Huertas, and finally in 1912 to the small mansion he owned on Calle Alfonso XII, in whose cool basement he kept his books and his personal laboratory. This house also preserves the initials "R.C." on its façade."Santiago Ramón y Cajal en Cuatro Caminos".
  9. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, his grandson of the same name, is professor of anatomical pathology at the University of Zaragoza and author of several studies on the work and person of his grandfather.

References

  1. ↑ Rachel Nuwer (May 1, 2013). "(Smithsonian Magazine) Rachel Nuwer:Happy Birthday to the Father of Modern Neuroscience, Who Wanted to Be an Artist".
  2. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1906". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved May 1, 2016.
  3. ↑ Edición completa de los Recuerdos de mi vida (Tomo I. «Mi infancia y juventud». Tomo II, «Historia de mí labor científica», 2 volúmenes in 4.º, con numerosos grabados. Madrid, 1901-1917).
  4. ↑ Solsona, Fernando. "Justo Ramón Casasús". Revista Serrablo (in español). Archived from the original on February 23, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2011.
  5. ↑ Garrido Marín, Eduardo (March 2014). "Naturaleza, montaña, deporte y aventura en la vida de Santiago Ramón y Cajal". Cultura, Ciencia y Deporte (in español). 9 (25): 69–80. Retrieved December 3, 2014.
  6. ↑ On his stay in Camagüey, see also J. E. Abr eu Ugarte, "Camagüey: estancia de Santiago F. Ramón y Cajal", Archivo Médico de Camagüey. Revista electrónica 13/6, 2009, pp. 1-11: "Of this stage of his life, Ramón y Cajal himself testified: '...it was the most pleasant period of my stay in Cuba'" (in M.I. Monteros-Valdivieso, Vida de Cajal, ed. Lex, Havana, 1955, p. 114).
  7. ↑ Id., ibid., p. 5.
  8. ↑ Id., ibid., p. 6.
  9. ↑ Ramón y Cajal, Santiago (1887). "Patogenia de la inflamación. Discursos para los ejercicios del Grado de Doctor de Don Santiago Ramón y Cajal" (PDF). Tesis (in español). Retrieved September 20, 2021.
  10. ↑ Ferrer Benimeli, José Antonio (1985). La Masonería en Aragón. Librería General. ISBN 84-7078-092-1.
  11. ↑ Whose daughter María would effectively inherit in 1955 the marquessate granted posthumously to her grandfather in 1952, cf. S. Córdoba, «Ramón y Cajal visto por la marquesa de Ramón y Cajal.» May 4, 1952, p. 27. ABC.
  12. ↑ Cajal en Valencia. Accessed May 2014.
  13. ↑ Durfort & Coll 2007, pp. 39–40.
  14. ↑ "Revista Trimestral de Histología Normal y Patológica" (PDF) (in español). August 1, 1888.
  15. ↑ "Santiago Ramón y Cajal". Facultad de Medicina UNAM (in español). Retrieved 2022-07-05.
  16. ↑ Ángel González de Pablo, «El Noventayocho y las nuevas instituciones científicas. La creación del Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas de Ramón y Cajal» in DYNAMIS Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. Illus. 1998, 18, 51-79.
  17. ↑ "Sir Henry Dale Biographical - The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1936". nobelprize.org. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  18. ↑ Gray, E. G. (1959). "Electron microscopy of synaptic contacts on dendrite spines of the cerebral cortex". Nature. 183: 1592–1593. doi:10.1038/1831592a0. PMID 13666826.
  19. ↑ 8 de agosto de 1900. Acta de la 2.ª. Reunión para la concesión del Premio de Moscú, celebrada en la Facultad de Medicina de París in which the said prize is awarded to S. Ramón y Cajal
  20. ↑ (in English) References on the Nobel Prize page for Santiago Ramón y Cajal, laureate in 1906 Nobel Foundation. Accessed February 3, 2012.
  21. ↑ Comunicación del Rector de la Universidad Central al Decano de Medicina de la concesión del título de Doctor Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Paris a D. S. Ramón y Cajal y D. Ramón Menéndez Pidal
  22. ↑ Histologie du système nerveux de l'homme & des vertébrés (in français). Paris. 1909.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  23. ↑ The differences between the decisions on paper, the subsidies granted and the actual functioning can be seen, for example, in the article by A. González de Pablo "El Noventayocho y las nuevas instituciones científicas. La creación del Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas de Ramón y Cajal", DYNAMIS. Acta Hisp. Med. Sci. Hist. illus. 18, 1998, pp. 51-79.
  24. ↑ "Real decreto concediendo la Gran Cruz de Alfonso XII á D. Santiago Ramón y Cajal" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (172). Madrid: 1226. June 21, 1902. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  25. ↑ "Dirección general de Contribuciones.- Relaciones de individuos agraciados con honores de Jefe superior de Administración civil y con las condecoraciones que se expresan" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (191). Madrid: 153–154. July 10, 1901. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  26. ↑ Ramón y Cajal, 1852-1934: Expediente administrativo y otros documentos (editado por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (España). Accessed July 2014.
  27. ↑ «Premios y medallas.» Archived September 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Accessed May 25, 2014.
  28. ↑ In general, a complete list can be seen in the section "Premios y distinciones honoríficas nacionales y extranjeras" of the important documentary work Ramón y Cajal, 1852-1934: Expediente administrativo y otros documentos, Ministry of Education, collection "Expedientes administrativos de grandes españoles", No. 2, Madrid, 1978, pp. 335 ff., even with illustrations of some of them, although it is in turn made clear that only the principal ones are included.
  29. ↑ RAMÓN Y CAJAL, SANTIAGO at the Senate.
  30. ↑ Baratas Díaz 1997, p. 261.
  31. ↑ Loren 1982, pp. 276–284.
  32. ↑ Archivos de Neurobiología 13, 1933, pp. 217-291 and 579-646.
  33. ↑ López Piñero, 2006, p. 340.
  34. ↑ Article in French
  35. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, "Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio", p. 241.
  36. ↑ Tomb of Ramón y Cajal (image).
  37. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, "Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio", p. 249.
  38. ↑ «España está de duelo.» October 18, 1934, p. 17. ABC. Accessed February 15, 2014.]
  39. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio, p. 290
  40. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio, pp. 289-290.
  41. ↑ "Catalogo de Sellos". Catálogo de Sellos de España FESOFI (in español). Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  42. ↑ Peñafiel, Jaime (October 16, 1994). "Nobles por decreto". El Mundo (in español). {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |newspaper= (help)
  43. ↑ "Decreto de 1 de abril de 1952 por el que se hace merced de Título del Reino, con la denominación de Marqués de Ramón y Cajal a favor de don Santiago Ramón y Cajal" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (92). Madrid: 1482. 01/04/1952. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  44. ↑ International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). "Cajal". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
  45. ↑ Web de jpl. "(117413) Ramonycajal".
  46. ↑ "Madrid rindió homenaje a Ramón y Cajal". ABC (in español). October 23, 1984.
  47. ↑ «Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, Ciento cincuenta aniversario: 1852-2002.» GEA (updated in 2006). Accessed February 15, 2014.
  48. ↑ RNE - Archivo sonoro - Santiago Ramón y Cajal - 26/10/09. Accessed February 15, 2014.
  49. ↑ It was announced within the framework of the 3rd Plenary of the Cuban Society of Morphological Sciences. In 2012 the first "Conferencias de la Jornada Científica de la Cátedra" took place, to which four Spanish experts on Cajal were invited. The chair maintains a website with abundant documentation and references, and a repository of recent publications (accessed 16-2-2014). Call for the 2nd edition of the competition "Tras las huellas de Cajal" (the period for receiving works is from 1/2 to 1/9 of 2014).
  50. ↑ Ansede, Manuel (February 20, 2019). "Un Museo Cajal sin Cajal". El País (in español). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  51. ↑ Javier Sampedro (December 6, 2014). "El misterio de las 12,000 cartas perdidas de Ramón y Cajal". El País (in español). Retrieved December 12, 2014. Cuando Juan Antonio Fernández Santarén se planteó la tarea monumental de editar el epistolario de Santiago Ramón y Cajal, su mayor perplejidad era que, a casi 80 años de la muerte del Nobel, nadie hubiera tenido antes esa iniciativa, y que el material ni siquiera se hubiera inventariado hasta 2008. Mal podía imaginar lo que se le venía encima: una historia truculenta de expolio, negligencia y desidia que ha destruido un patrimonio histórico esencial, el legado del científico español más importante de todos los tiempos. Santarén ha logrado rescatar 3510 cartas enviadas o recibidas por Cajal, pero estima que faltan otras 12 000, incluidas seguramente las más valiosas. ¿Dónde están? He aquí el misterio de las 12 000 cartas.
  52. ↑ Words of Cajal after the speech by Ignacio Bolívar at the presentation of the Echegaray Prize of the Royal Academy of Sciences, on May 7, 1922.
  53. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, "Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio", p. 240.
  54. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Recuerdos de mi vida (in español) (Juan Fernández Santarén ed.). Madrid. 1901–1917.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  55. ↑ Ramón y Cajal, Santiago (2016). "prólogo". In Manuel Neila (ed.). Charlas de café (in español). Sevilla: Renacimiento. pp. 7 a 19. ISBN 9788416685622. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  56. ↑ Alonso, José Ramón (November 2014). "Cajal, fotógrafo". Principia (in español). ISSN 2386-5997.
  57. ↑ Santiago Ramón y Cajal Junquera, "Ramón y Cajal, la voluntad de un sabio", pp. 266-277.

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