Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish physician and scientist, was the first to describe the nervous system with exquisite precision. His drawings illustrate cells comprised of three distinct structures. Cajal posited that these cells function as information processing units that communicate within functional networks. To reveal these cell structures, he employed a variety of staining techniques. In 1906, Cajal and Camillo Golgi shared the Nobel Prize “in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.
Cajal was a visionary who altered scientific thought about neurons and the nervous system. On November 7th, 2014, an exhibition of seven of his drawings (on loan from the Cajal Institute in Madrid) opened to the public in the National Institutes of Health's John Edward Porter Neruorscience Research Center.
The Porter Center is home to neuroscientists from seven of NIH’s institutes, and as this new facility was designed to encourage collaboration.
Santiago Ramon y Cajal Drawings Exhibit
