About Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Santiago Ramón y Cajal (Spanish: [sanˈtjaɣo raˈmon i kaˈxal]; 1 May 1852 – 17 October 1934) was a Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist, and histologist specialising in neuroanatomy, and the central nervous system. He and Camillo Golgi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906. Ramón y Cajal was the first Spaniard to win a scientific Nobel Prize. His original investigations of the microscopic structure of the brain made him a pioneer of modern neuroscience. Hundreds of his drawings illustrating the arborization (tree-like growth) of brain cells are still in use, since the mid-20th century, for educational and training purposes. == Biography == Santiago Ramón y Cajal was born on 1 May 1852, in the town of Petilla de Aragón, Navarre, Spain. As a child, he was transferred many times from one school to another because of behavior that was declared poor, rebellious, and anti-authoritarian. An extreme example of his precociousness and rebelliousness at the age of eleven is his 1863 imprisonment for destroying his neighbor's yard gate with a homemade cannon. He was a keen painter, artist, and gymnast, but his father neither appreciated nor encouraged these abilities, even though these artistic talents would contribute to his success later in life. His father apprenticed him to a shoemaker and barber, to "try and give his son much-needed discipline and stability." Over the summer of 1868, his father took him to graveyards to find human remains for anatomical study.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.