Ramon y Cajal, Santiago, << rah MAWN ee kah HAHL, san tee AH goh >> (1852-1934), was a Spanish medical researcher who added greatly to knowledge of the nervous system. Most scientists consider him one of the founders of modern neurology. He shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with the Italian anatomist Camillo Golgi.
Ramon y Cajal provided detailed descriptions of many parts of the nervous system, including the spinal cord and brain. He showed that the nervous system consists of individual nerve cells called neurons. In opposition to many scientists of his day, Ramon y Cajal argued that neurons do not form a continuous structure. Instead, they are separated by narrow gaps, over which nerve impulses are transmitted. Each neuron consists of a cell body and a number of fibers. He proposed that the longest fiber, called the axon, transmits nerve impulses over the gap to other neurons. Short, branching fibers called dendrites pick up the impulses and carry them to the cell body. He also did important work on the breakdown and regrowth of nerve cells.
Ramon y Cajal was born in Petilla de Aragon in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain. He graduated from the University of Zaragoza in 1873. He served with the Spanish army medical service in Cuba but was discharged a year later because he contracted malaria there. He returned to Zaragoza for additional training in anatomy and received a doctorate in medicine in 1879.
Ramon y Cajal then began a career of research and writing, studying tissue structures and writing articles on cell biology. He served as professor of anatomy at the University of Valencia from 1883 to 1886, professor of histology (the study of tissues under a microscope) at the University of Barcelona from 1886 to 1892, and professor of histology and pathological anatomy at the University of Madrid from 1892 to 1922. He wrote several books about the nervous system and an autobiography, Recollections of My Life (published in 1937, after his death).
