Santiago Ramón y Cajal By: Becca Fijalkovich 6

Background He was born on May 1, 1852 in Navarre, Spain. He attended medical school at the University of Zaragoza. In 1877, he received his doctorate in medicine and taught at the University of Valencia. In 1879 he married Doña Silvería Fañanás García. They had four daughters and three sons. In 1887, he moved to the University of Madrid where he began work on the central nervous system.

Background He discovered a cell in the brain, and his work on the brain advanced modern neuroscience. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in He died October 18, 1934.

His work Cajal was a Spanish physician and scientist. He is considered to be the founder of modern neurobiology. He served as an army doctor in In 1877, he taught anatomy at the University of Valencia that focused on the study of inflammation, cholera and epithelial cells. He made drawings of an atlas for anatomy for his father, but they were never published. He began to publish scientific works in They included: Manual de Histología normal y Técnica micrográfica (Manual of normal histology and micrographic technique), Elementos de Histología, etc. (Elements of histology, etc. He published over 100 articles in French and Spanish scientific journals. They focused on structure of the nervous system and of the brain and spinal cord.

His work His studies on the brain were focused on its cortex (outer layer of brain that controls consciousness). He won many awards which include: Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Madrid, Royal Academy of Medicine of Madrid, Spanish Society of Natural History and of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, Honorary Member of the Spanish Medical and Surgical Academy. Cajal went to London in 1904 and to the Clark University in 1899 to give lectures on the structure of the human brain and on the latest researches on this subject. Cajal’s drawing of the chick cerebellum

His work He viewed neurons as information processing units that made connections and organized into networks to complete their functions. He formulated the neuron doctrine, which still today is the basis for our understanding of the organization of the nervous system. He also discovered dendritic spines (micron-size structures that performed cell-to-cell communication). Cajal described axonal growth (a process essential to the development of the nervous system).

His drawings Cells of the cerebral cortex in a cat Spinal cord with nerve roots.

His drawings Brain cells of a cat. Neural connections in the brain.

Catalog entry Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish neurologist who studied brain cells and nerve connections. He is considered the father of neurobiology and his advances in the field are still used by scientists today.

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