There is such a scientist, he is a gymnast, or a neuroscientist, he also draws very well, and he has won the Nobel Prize.
When he was young, he was a mischievous bear child in the eyes of others (he even destroyed the gate of the neighbor's yard with a cannon he made himself)...
He was Ramon Cajal.
Image source: Wikipedia
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The legendary childhood of Santiago Ramón-Cajal
Ramon Cajal was a renowned pathologist, histology and neurologist. Born in 1852 in the Autonomous Community of Aragon, Spain, he was the recipient of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
Ramon-Cajal was the child of the famous physician and anatomy lecturers Justo Ramón and Antonia Cajal. As a child, he was rebellious and had anti-authoritarian tendencies, so he was moved from one school to another.
When he was eleven years old, when other children were still studying seriously in class, he destroyed the gate of the neighbor's yard with a cannon he had made, and he was imprisoned for this extreme behavior.
Ramon Cajal was also an avid artist, painter and gymnast. He worked for a time as a shoemaker and hairdresser, and he was extremely well known in the Aragonese region.
Cajal sits in a laboratory in Valencia in his early 30s, credit: Cajal Institute (CSIC), Madrid
Because of his harsh and ruthless character, Kajal's father believed that the human mind exists for the acquisition of knowledge.
According to Kajal, his father despised and criticized everything about art and literature, rejected things that were purely for appreciation or amusement, and could only have medical texts in the house, and there could never be books such as novels.
Cajal's father even stubbornly believed that appreciating art was an incurable disease.
Kajal's mother, on the other hand, was the opposite of her father's personality, a hidden romantic who often hid cheap science fiction novels at the bottom of a box and secretly stuffed them to Kajal.
Cajal reads fascinatingly the works of Hugo, Cervantes and other authors. After graduating from Cajal University, his focus on reading novels was applied to microscopic observation, and reading novels created his fantastical ability to explore more unknown areas.
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An important achievement of Santiago Ramón-Cajal
Due to Cajal's meager income, all the equipment used for the experiment needs to be paid out of his own pocket, but fortunately, the research on human histology is relatively small compared to other studies, as long as a working microscope is enough.
In 1873, italian scientist Gorky pioneered the silver dichromate staining method, mixing silver nitrate with potassium dichromate to prepare silver dichromate, and using silver dichromate for the staining of brain tissue. Gorky found that the staining effect of the vast majority of brain tissue is not ideal, and only about 3% of neurons are very clearly displayed under the action of silver dichromate, but the complete structure of a neuron can be clearly observed.
However, due to the limitations of the silver dyeing method, the response was flat until five years later, When Cajal, who graduated from medical school, carefully studied the silver gluloate dyeing method and improved it, making the silver gluloate dyeing method more perfect and reliable. Kajal's talent for painting also helped him a lot, and the results of his hand-drawn research work convinced many scientists.
Cone neurons in the cerebral cortex drawn by Cajal on paper in 1904, Credit: Cajal Institute (CSIC), Madrid
The invention of the new staining method has enabled people to have a better understanding of the structure of the nervous system. At that time, the scientific community was divided: did nerve cells merge with each other or exist independently? How does the brain work? There have always been two voices in the scientific community regarding the relationship between nerve cells.
The first sound, represented by Kajal, is the theory of neurons: nerve cells exist independently, neurons belong to a physiological unit of the human central nervous system, and each neuron is an independent entity. Dendrites and axons stretch out from the nerve cell body, which is responsible for support and nutrition; while another school of "network theory" believes that nerve cells are fused with each other, and the entire nervous system of the human body is like a super-large network, each nerve cell is responsible for providing nutrients, and the brain is a whole.
Today, neuronal theory is widely recognized, but more than a hundred years ago, the theory of the network was the mainstream at that time.
Cajal devoted his life to observing the relationship between retinal nerve cells. Although retinal cells were already known to the scientific community at the time, their arrangement and their causes were still ambiguous.
Kajal's research has made these complex neural structures clear and easy to understand, and since the information transmitted by the frustum and rod cells is isolated from each other, the idea that nerve cells are fused into a whole network is obviously untenable in academia. The support of the factual theory in front of us has made the neuron theory begin to be respected by most people.
Cajal mapped glial cells of the mouse spinal cord in 1899 Image source: Cajal Institute (CSIC), Madrid
Kajal says he has studied and observed more than 1 million neurons, witnessing every stage of their lives: from birth to growth, adversity, trauma, to final decline and death.
Kajal's wild imagination allowed him to imagine neurons as a fierce dramatic protagonist, a specimen of dead brain tissue, and the story in Kajal's brain came to life.
Neuronal fibers in the brain "grop for each other." The painful contact between them becomes a "protoplasmic kiss"—"the ecstasy of endings in the epic of love."
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