Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Santiago Felipe Ramón y Cajal ( born May 1, 1852 in petilla de Aragón, Navarra, Spain, † October 18, 1934 in Madrid) was a Spanish physician and received in 1906 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with the Italian physician Camillo Golgi and physiologists in evaluating the totality of their studies and their numerous publications. Santiago Ramón y Cajal worked mainly on the fine structures of the nervous system, especially the brain and spinal cord.

Life

Ramón y Cajal was the son of a doctor with an interest in anatomy, who carried out self- sections. At the age of fourteen he initially received training as a barber before he assisted his father at the medical school of Zaragoza several years in the sections. From 1873 he worked as a physician, he began his career in the army. In the years 1874/1875 he took part in an expedition to Cuba, where he became infected with malaria and tuberculosis. After his return to Spain in 1875, the young doctors took a job as a junior doctor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zaragoza. In 1877 he received his doctorate at the University Complutense of Madrid. In 1879 he became director of a museum in Zaragoza. In 1883, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was Professor of Descriptive and General Anatomy at the University of Valencia, where he worked on his later work Manual de histologia normal y ténica micrográfica. In 1887 he became Professor of Histology and Pathology at the University of Barcelona and 1892 in the same disciplines, the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1900 he became director of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Higiene and Biológicas.

1906 Santiago Ramón y Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Camillo Golgi " in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system. " His outstanding work was Textura del sistema del hombre y de los nervioso vertebrados ( 1899-1904 ) and Estudios sobre la Degeneración y del sistema regeneración nervioso ( 1913/1914 ). The doctor died on October 18, 1934 in Madrid.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal was married since 1879 with Silveria Fañanás García, the couple had four daughters and three sons.

Services

Ramón y Cajal's most important works were studies of the fine structure of the central nervous system. Cajal used a histological staining technique, which had recently been developed by Camillo Golgi. Golgi found that when they treated brain tissue with a solution of silver nitrate, a relatively small number of neurons was stained dark in the brain. This allowed the Golgi to clarify the structure of individual neurons in detail and led him to the conclusion that nerve tissue a coherent mesh ( or grid) forms of interconnected cells - similar to the way it was from the circulatory system known.

With Golgi's method, but Ramón y Cajal came to very different findings. He postulated that the nervous system consists of billions of neurons, and that these cells are polarized. Instead of a coherent network Cajal proposed that neurons via special connections - communicate with each other - the synapses. The term " synapse " was coined in 1897 by Charles Scott Sherrington. This hypothesis was the basis for the neuro doctrine which states that the smallest unit of the nervous system is the single neuron. Later it was found by electron microscopy that each neuron is fully surrounded by a cell membrane. Cajal's theory against Golgi hypothesis was strengthened by the discovery.

With the discovery of electrical synapses ( gap junctions: direct links between cells, nerve cells here ) then showed, however, that Golgi hypothesis was at least partially true.

Ramon y Cajal postulated that the growth direction and the speed of growth of the axons ( axonal ) are controlled by a growth cone at its ends. He had discovered that neuronal cells could receive chemical signals, the direction for the growth anzeigten (chemotaxis ).

Ramón y Cajal operational intensive studies to demonstrate qualitative differences between the brains of humans and animals. To this end, he hypothesized, "The functional superiority of the human brain is very closely connected with the amazing abundance and the unusual shape diversity of the so-called neurons with short axons. " That was the crux of the problem of the cerebral cortex, and finally he had to admit: " indescribable ... the complexity of the structure of the gray matter is so complicated that it defies the persistent curiosity of researchers and will defy many centuries. "

Drawings by Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Drawing of the cells in the chicken cerebellum. Estructura de los centros de las aves nerviosos, Madrid, 1905.

Drawing of the optic tectum of a sparrow. Estructura de los centros de las aves nerviosos, Madrid, 1905.

Drawing of Purkinje cells (A) and granule cells (B ) of the cerebellum of the pigeon by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1899. Instituto Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain.