May 18, 2025

Aisha Chloe Camaquin

11th Grade

John F. Kennedy High School 

Born on May 1, 1852, in Navarre, Spain, Santiago Ramón y Cajal had an unusual upbringing. As an attempt to inspire him to pursue medicine, his father often took him to graveyard sites to find bones for sketching. Against his father’s wishes, he initially wanted to become an artist, although he was eventually persuaded to attend medical school in 1870. He received his medical degree from the University of Zaragoza in 1873 and served as an army doctor in Cuba for the following two years. Due to being afflicted with tuberculosis and malaria, he returned to Spain in 1875. Then, in 1877, he received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Madrid. 

During the 1880s, two theories revolved around the composition of the nervous system–the reticular theory, which proposed that the nervous system was one continuous cell network, and the neuron theory, which proposed that the nervous system was composed of unique, separate cells. The former was supported by Camillo Golgi, who developed a black stain called the black reaction. The latter, by Ramón y Cajal, who, upon seeing the black reaction, applied the method to his studies and improved it through modifications. Using the modified technique, he studied various kinds of animal brains before realizing that the ends of neuron fibers were not continuous. They were independent and made temporary contact with surrounding neurons, presumably for communication without functional dependence on other cells. Seeing this, he proposed that there were gaps (synapses) in between neuron bodies, contrary to what the reticular theory suggested. This belief would later be known as the neuron doctrine and be proven true once the electron microscope was invented. 

Despite having to abandon his artistic dreams, Ramón y Cajal never actually gave up art. When he was a student, he’d use it to understand anatomical models. When he was a teacher, he'd often incorporate it in his lectures to teach his students. Throughout the 25 and more years he studied brains, Ramón y Cajal would spend hours looking through a microscope to draw what he saw. He made 2,900 detailed scientific sketches, most of which were published in several books, and his most famous was that of a pyramidal cell. 

In 1905, Ramón y Cajal won the Helmholtz Gold Medal. The following year, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Then, in 1920, the Cajal Institute in Madrid was constructed in his honor, and he would teach there for the remainder of his life. Today, Ramón y Cajal’s work regarding neurons continues to be referenced, and his discovery of the neuron doctrine is considered the basis of modern neuroscience.