He was a Nobel Prize winner and contributed enormously to the scientific knowledge of the nervous system.
His name always appears in biology and histology books, especially when talking about an organ as important as thebrainbecause, Ramón y Cajal, among many other findings, is the one who discovered how neurons were organized.
However, despite the fact that his name is well known, baptizing both research centers and awards for scientific contribution, few know his busy personal life.
Biography of researcher Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Let’s learn more about his life, from his early years as a curious child interested in drawing and nature, through his years in which he was a soldier defending Spain to when he won the highest prize awarded to a Spanish scientist.
Early Years
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose full name was Santiago Felipe Ramón Cajal, was born in Petilla de Aragón, Spain, on May 1, 1852 .
He spent his childhood in various Aragonese towns, due to the profession of his father, who was a surgeon. His first studies were with the Piarists in Jaca and later he did high school in Huesca.
The young Ramón y Cajal, from a very young age, showed an interest in the plastic arts, being particularly good at drawing.
In addition, he was very contrary to the pedagogical philosophy of the time, marked by the repetitive learning of the contents given in class, which, together with his mischievous personality, earned him more than one run-in with his teachers.
He was a great fan of the mountains, a defender of the need to educate by contacting nature. This motivated him to contact the Institución Libre de Enseñanza who defended ideals similar to those of Cajal.
During these years, especially when I was studying high school, the political situation in Spain was convulsive, leading to the exile of the monarch Isabel II and the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic.
Military training and life
He began his medical studies in Zaragoza around 1870tag. Three years later, at the age of twenty-one, Ramón y Cajal graduated from this career.
During the year 1873 he was called to perform compulsory military service, beginning his brief but remarkable military life.
The first months in the military were spent in Zaragoza itself, to be later assigned to other Spanish cities, specifically Burgos and Lleida.
However, Cuba was the place where he ended up where his health was most affectedtag. The island, which at that time was still a Spanish colony, had already begun its path to independence, and the metropolis was going to try to do everything it could to hinder the plans for self-determination.
In 1874, Ramón y Cajal went to the island. During the journey he was promoted to captain, since traveling the wide ocean already implied the acquisition of this military title.
One of the reasons that made him decide to travel there was his curiosity and desire to learn what he had read in so many books on tropical fauna and flora, convinced that Cuba lived up to its fame. Unfortunately, when he got off the ship, he saw the reality.
The climate of Havana was unbearable for a European like him, especially the enormous plague of mosquitoes that were found on the island and that concentrated on attacking any animal that was in their way to inoculate them with malaria.
Ramón y Cajal ended up working in an infirmary on the island, later ending up ill theretag. He was then transferred to another infirmary on the island, which was much worse in terms of hygiene and measures to treat sick soldiers.
If falling ill in a country far from his homeland and that had disappointed him were not enough, the corruption of the rulers on the island finished him off emotionally.
That is why, after being diagnosed with severe malarial cachexia, he returned to the peninsula in 1875, in a pitiful physical state. Fortunately, the care of his family helps him regain his strength and thus initiate what would be a prolific investigative task.
Investigative Stage
In 1875 he began his doctorate. He manages to buy himself a microscope and, already in 1876, obtains a place at the Nuestra Señora de Gracia Hospital in Zaragoza. He finished his doctorate in 1977, presenting his thesis “Pathogenesis of inflammation”.
The decade of the 70s of the 19th century was marked by ups and downs for the already doctor Cajal: he contracted tuberculosis in 1878, the following year he obtained, on the contrary, the position of director in an important Zaragoza museum.
In addition, he married for love and against the opinion of his parents with Silveria Fañanás García, with whom he had a happy marriage for fifty-one years that gave him seven children.
In 1882 he won the chair of Descriptive Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine of Valencia from which, in 1885, he had the opportunity to study the cholera epidemic that hit the city.
However, his most outstanding research is with respect to neurons. In 1887 he obtained the chair of histology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona.
In 1888, in Barcelona, Cajal lived his peak year, as he made a great discoverytag. He discovers the mechanisms that govern the morphology ofnerve cells in the gray matter of the brain.
Thanks to this, he manages to discover that brain tissues were composed of more or less independent units. This was contrary to what was believed at the time, which was that the brain was made up of tissues made up of continuous connections.
From this discovery the doctrine of the neuron was formulated, being remarkable the law of dynamic polarization, a model capable of explaining why the nervous impulse traveled in a unidirectional way.
Thanks to his growing influence, while in Madrid, he managed to get the central government to create the Biological Research Laboratory in 1901, where Ramón y Cajal worked until his retirement in 1922. During these years the researcher discovered several neural structures, thanks to the use of staining techniques originally applied by Camillo Golgi but improved.
Cajal discovered the neural growth cone, dendritic spines, synaptic cleft among other structures, shown in detail in the drawings made by himself.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal: Nobel Prize
Santiago Ramón y Cajal is known for being the first Spaniard to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine , an award shared with Camillo Golgi in 1906 for his contributions to the field of histology and neuroanatomy.
The curious thing about the awarding of this prize is that the two winners did not have the same vision of how the brain worked, despite the fact that Cajal did recognize the beneficial scientific task of Golgi and even used his histological staining techniques.
Since he won this award, there has only been one other great Spanish scientist to win the Nobel Prize: Severo Ochoa in 1959.
But the Nobel was not the only thing Ramón y Cajal won. He was recognized by multiple institutions around the world: Fauvelle Prize (1896) from the Société de Biologie de Paris, Rubio Prize (1897) from the Royal Academy of Madrid, Grand Cross of Alfonso XII (1900) and Grand Cross of Isabel la Católica. (1901), to name just a few.
In addition, he was appointed doctor honoris causa by several universities, such as Boston, the Sorbonne or Cambridge.
Final years and death
When he was already retired, in 1926, a monument was erected in his honor in the Retiro park in Madrid, as an act that despite having completed his professional task, his mark had not faded.
In 1930 he suffered a profound blow when his beloved wife died of tuberculosis, however, he did not stop publishing some of his findings.
After gastrointestinal complications that weakened his heart, Santiago Ramón y Cajal died in Madrid on October 17, 1934 .
Legacy and curiosities
One of the most notable legacies of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in keeping with his philanthropic spirit, was that several annual and biannual awards were organized with money from his own pocket to promote histological and pathological research.
Cajal was an honest man. When he was appointed director of the Biological Sciences Laboratory, he petitioned the government to reduce his salary , considering it extremely generous.
In addition, he rejected a position as important as that of Minister of Health and Public Instruction, only accepting the position of senator for life at the request of José Canalejas because this position did not have an economic allocation.
Another curious fact that shows his personality was when his son went abroad to investigate and Ramón y Cajal paid him everything. Cajal was at that time director of the Board that awarded scholarships for this purpose, and for this reason he was asked why he had not given a scholarship to his own son. Santiago Ramón y Cajal answered that for that very reason, because she was his son.
It should be noted that in 1877 Santiago Ramón y Cajal entered the Masonic lodge of the Knights of the Night, receiving the symbolic name of the Andalusian doctor Averroestag. This, despite the fact that it was taken into account during the Franco regime, was not an impediment for him to receive the title of Marquis posthumously on the centenary of his birth in 1952.
Although Ramón y Cajal is mostly known for his work in the field of histology, he also investigated photography, discovering ways to perfect it, although some of his findings were also achieved by Thomas Edison. He also made some improvements of his own to the gramophone, although they did not become very famous due to not having anyone to finance his projects.
Years later, he was awarded the title of honorary president of the Royal Photographic Society of Madrid.
Bibliographic references
- Baratas Díaz, Luis Alfredo (1997). “The neuro-embryological work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal”. Dynamis: Spanish Journal of Medical Sciences. Illustrated History (University of Granada)
- González, M. (2006). Santiago Ramón y Cajal, one hundred years after the Nobel Prize. Science, 84: 68-75.
- Loren, Santiago (1982). Noguer, ed. Ramon and Cajal. Barcelona: Editorial Just in Time SL
- Ramon and Cajal, Santiago (2006). Selectedworks. Antonio BoschEditor.
- Ramón y Cajal, Santiago (2008). Memories of my life. History of my scientific work. Publishing Alliance.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.