Santiago Ramon Cajal

Santiago Ramon Cajal was a Spanish neuroscientist, histologist, and physician who (with Camillo Golgi) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for establishing the neuron (or nerve cell) as the primary structural and functional unit of the nervous system. He was born in Petilla de Aragón, Navarre, into a military family and followed a medical career. He served as a medical officer in the Spanish Army and contracted malaria and tuberculosis in Cuba. He later became a professor of anatomy and histology at various universities in Spain. He improved Golgi's silver nitrate stain and developed a gold stain for the study of nervous tissue. He used these techniques to observe and draw the fine details of neurons and their connections in different parts of the brain and spinal cord. He proposed the neuron doctrine, which states that the nervous system is composed of discrete and independent cells that communicate with each other through specialized junctions called synapses. He also described many types of neurons and their functions, such as the pyramidal cell, the Purkinje cell, the retinal ganglion cell, and the interstitial cell of Cajal. He also made important contributions to the fields of neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, neurodegeneration, and neurotrophism. He wrote several books on neuroscience, such as Textura del Sistema Nervioso del Hombre y de los Vertebrados (1899–1904) and Recuerdos de mi vida (1917). He died in 1934 in Madrid and was buried at the Cajal Institute, which he founded and directed. He is regarded as the father of modern neuroscience and one of the greatest scientists of all time.