Santiago Ramón y Cajal, born in the small Spanish town of Petilla de Aragón on May 1, 1852, was a major figure in the history of neuroanatomy. As related in his delightful autobiography, he was somewhat mischievous as a child and determined to become an artist, much to the consternation of his father, a respected local physician. Eventually, however, Ramón y Cajal entered the University of Zaragoza, and received a degree in medicine in 1873. As a professor of anatomy at Zaragoza, his interests were mostly in bacteriology until 1887, when he visited Madrid and first saw through the microscope histological sections of brain tissue treated with the Golgi method, which had been introduced in 1873.

Although few workers had employed this technique, Ramón y Cajal immediately saw that it offered great hope in solving one of...