From the 19th of November onwards, the National Museum of Natural Sciences is hosting an exhibition that looks back at the exciting life of the Spanish scientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, to celebrate the centenary of his appointment as director of the Cajal Institute, on the 12th of November 1920.

The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of the CSIC Cajal Institute, an institution that turned 100 this year and which has provided all the exhibits on show. The exhibition features his drawings, which blend realism and artistic quality, the tools he used in his work, personal objects, some of the numerous distinctions he received throughout his career and, of course, the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 1906.

Born in Pettilla de Aragón (Navarra) in 1852, Santiago Ramón y Cajal was a Spanish doctor and scientist specialising in histology and pathological anatomy. He is considered the father of neuroscience, pioneering the study of the morphology and connective processes of nerve cells, and developing his own theory: the neuron doctrine, based on the fact that brain tissue is composed of individual cells. He also devoted himself to understanding the composition of the retina.

Ramón y Cajal graduated in Medicine in Zaragoza, where he moved with his entire family in 1870. He was an army physician in Cuba during the Ten Years War. In 1882, he was appointed to the chair of Descriptive Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine in Valencia, although five years later he was appointed to the chair of Histology at the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Barcelona. There he began studying nerve cells.

In 1892, he held the chair of Histology and Normal Histochemistry and Pathological Anatomy at the Central University of Madrid, and in 1901 he convinced the government to set up the Biological Research Laboratory, where he worked until his retirement in 1922. But he continued his scientific work at the Cajal Institute, named in his honour. He was appointed a lifetime senator in 1908, and among his countless awards were the Great Cross of Isabel la Católica in 1901, the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906, and the Echegaray Medal, awarded in 1922 by the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences.

Image credits:

Cajal Institute (CSIC)