The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron

Ehrlich’s (The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal) well-researched and comprehensive biography of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the 19th-century father of modern neuroscience, is first major biography of the Nobel Prize–winning scientist. Cajal’s father was an ambitious country doctor practicing in the Aragonese highlands of Spain. Cajal bucked under his father’s strict guidance and wanted only to be an artist. However, the combination of Cajal’s artistic sensibilities and the rigorous scientific training under his father led him to make his extraordinary discoveries. A meticulous histologist (the microscopic study of animal tissues), Cajal discovered that the nervous system is made up of distinct cells, a revolutionary concept that disproved the belief that the nervous system was a single continuous network. Cajal became a beloved figure in Spain as he elevated the opinion of his country in the eyes of the rest of the Western world. This biography contains black-and-white images throughout and eight pages of color illustrations of Cajal’s anatomical drawings.