Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934; Spain)

Recognized as the father of neuroscience, Santiago Ramon y Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1906, along with Camillo Golgi, for his work on the structure of the nervous system and the role of the neuron.

The son of Justo Ramon and Antonia Cajal, Santiago Ramon y Cajal (also known as Cajal) was born on 1 May 1852 in the village of Petilla de Aragón, Spain, where his father was a rural doctor. Justo Ramon earned a doctorate in medicine in 1858 and eventually became a professor of dissection and anatomy at the Universidad de Zaragoza (University of Saragossa), which later would be a major influence on Cajal’s career.

At a young age, Cajal was interested in being an artist yet also showed signs of potential as an inventor which, when not channeled correctly, could lead to trouble, as when he destroyed a neighbor’s gate with a homemade cannon at the age of 11. Seeking to instill discipline and stability in his son, Justo Ramon apprenticed Cajal to a shoemaker and a barber. By the time Cajal was 16, however, he was assisting his father in anatomical studies by sketching bones from human remains found in a cemetery. The merging of arts and medicine had a profound impact on Cajal’s future.

Cajal attended medical school at the Universidad de Zaragoza and graduated as a licentiate in medicine in 1873, at the age of 21. After entering the Spanish army as a medical officer, he served in an expedition to Cuba in 1874-1875, in the midst of Cuba’s 10-year struggle to achieve independence from Spain. The tropical environment did not treat Cajal kindly, as he contacted both malaria and tuberculosis.

After recovering from these illnesses in Spain, Cajal quickly succeeded in the field of medicine. In 1875, he became an assistant at the school of anatomy in the Universidad de Zaragoza. In 1877, after studying in Madrid, he received a doctorate in medicine. During the late 1870s and early 1880s, he divided his time between studying in Madrid and working in Zaragoza. In 1879, he became the director of the anatomical museum at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de Zaragoza. Also that year he married Silveria Fañanas Garcia, which whom he eventually had seven children.

In the early 1880s, while studying in Madrid for an exam that would allow him to become a professor, Cajal saw a demonstration of the microscopic preparation of cells. Upon his return to Zaragoza, Cajal set up his own laboratory in the attic of his home, where he taught himself histology, which is the study of the microscopic structure of cells and tissues or microscopic anatomy. This was part of his more general study of inflammation, muscle anatomy, and microbiology. Based on his studies, he began writing about histology.

In 1883, Cajal became a professor of anatomy and histology at the Universidad de Valencia. His early work there focused on the pathology of inflammation, the structure of epithelial cells and tissues, and the microbiology of cholera.

In 1887, Cajal became a professor of histology and pathological anatomy at the Universidad de Barcelona, where he worked until 1892. Also in 1887, Cajal learned of a technique to stain nerve cells, which was first developed by the Italian Camillo Golgi in 1873. Golgi’s “reazione nera” (black reaction) used specific chemicals to make neurons visible against a transparent yellow background. Cajal experimented with this method in his own laboratory, finding that different tissues required different procedures and that tissues from younger animals allowed better staining results than tissues from older animals.

Using his early skills as an artist, Cajal created detailed drawings of the cells he studied under his microscope. His systematic documentation of the microscopic structure of the central nervous system supported his theories that challenged the commonly accepted ideas about how cells in the brain work. At this time in Spain, there was little support for scientific research, so Cajal edited and financed his own medical journal, Revista Trimestral de Histología Normal y Patológica (Quarterly Review of Normal and Pathological Histology), where he published the results of his work.

By 1891, Cajal devised the theory that nerve cells are individual cells that are not anatomically connected to other nerve cells. The term “neuron” was proposed by another scientist (Heinrich von Waldeyer) to refer to these individual nerve cells. Cajal also stated that the neuron is the structural and functional unit of the nervous system and that the neuron has three parts: dendrites, soma, and axon. His illustrations of nerve cells showed what he called “arborizations” in that nerve cells have branches like trees that grow and become more elaborate over time.

In 1892, Cajal moved to Madrid where he was appointed professor of histology and pathological anatomy. At this time, Spain was felt to be in decline compared to the rest of Europe, which was more heavily influenced by the industrial revolution and what has been referred to as “the cult of positive science.” As a member of the “generación de ’98”, Cajal worked toward an appreciation for science and its role in society.

In the early 1890s, Cajal began to receive recognition in the form of honorary degrees and prizes and was elected as a member to many scientific societies and academies. His reputation extended beyond Spain. In 1894, he was invited to give the prestigious Croonian Lecture at the British Royal Society of London. In subsequent years, he received honorary degrees from universities in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Untied States.

In 1900, Cajal was appointed as the director of the Instituto Nacional de Higiene (National Institute of Hygiene) and of the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas (Biological Research laboratory) in 1901. During this time, he continued to improve upon Golgi’s staining techniques.

In 1906, along with Golgi, Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for their work on the structure of the nervous system, even though they supported differing theories about that structure. The theory supported by Cajal ultimately proved to be more accurate and more widely accepted, so that it is Cajal who is more often recognized as the father of neuroscience.

In 1920, the king of Spain commissioned a building for the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas, of which Cajal was the director. The Laboratorio at the same time was renamed the Instituto Cajal, where Cajal continued to work until his death in 1934.

Cajal wrote a memoir, Recuerdos de mi Vida (Recollections of my Life); the first volume Mi Infancia y Juventud (My Childhood and Youth) was published in Madrid in 1901, and the second volume Historia de mi Labor Cientifica (Story of my Scientific Work) in 1917. The two were combined into one publication in 1923. The 1923 version is available online in Spanish at Instituto Cervantes (cvc.cervantes.es).

Other sources include:

http://www.Wikipedia.com

http://www.Nobelprize.org

http://www.britannica.com

http://www.scholarpedia.org

Dr. Ivan Vera

Born in San Cristobal and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Dr. Vera was the fifth of seven children whose parents had not graduated from high school yet stressed the point that education was the best path towards a better life.  By heeding his parents’ advice and excelling in high school, Dr. Vera earned scholarships throughout his academic career, which culminated in a PhD degree in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.  That doctoral degree opened the doors for a rewarding career in international organizations, including the United Nations.

After his freshman year of college, at the Universidad Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Dr. Vera was among the first group of students to be awarded a scholarship in the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho program, which supported Venezuelan students studying engineering in the United States.  After one year at the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Vera transferred to the University of Michigan, where he became interested in chemistry and earned a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1978.  Instead of following the more obvious path of a career in the petrochemical industry, Dr. Vera opted to work in the water treatment plant at the Planta Centro thermoelectric power plant in Venezuela.

As the chief unit engineer and later the manager of the desalination plant, Dr. Vera was responsible for operating the reverse osmosis plant, at the time the largest in the Western hemisphere, so the electric plant would have the proper type of water for generating the steam to turn the turbines to generate electricity.  By 1981, he felt that, to properly manage the plant, he would need a degree in management.  The electric power company, CADAFE, gave him a scholarship to pursue an MBA in the management of science, technology and innovation, first at the University of Dallas and then at George Washington University, in Washington D.C.

While at GWU, he found a summer job as the project manager/instructor for an educational program sponsored by NASA, to encourage Hispanic students to explore the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).  The summer program, supervised by NASA engineer Orlando Gutierrez and managed by Lucy Negron-Evelyn, sought to inspire Hispanic students to aim for something higher in life than society at large usually suggested was possible. In 1983, a NASA Deputy Secretary presented Dr. Vera with an award for his work in the “El Ingeniero” program. Staff at NASA also encouraged Dr. Vera to set his sights on a PhD. After attaining his MBA in 1984, he started with another scholarship from CADAFE to pursue a doctoral degree in energy management and policy. Dr. Vera moved from Washington D.C. to Philadephia as a graduate student at the Energy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Now at UPenn, an opportunity arose for Dr. Vera to conduct a project, funded by CADAFE, to launch an experiment on the NASA space shuttle to see if polymer membranes, used in reverse osmosis, would have significantly different structures if cast in low or no gravity in space, compared to those cast on Earth. For this project, Dr. Vera collaborated with the NASA Bioprocessing Research Center, headed by Dr. Paul Todd. The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 delayed his work, although the experiment did finally fly on sounding rockets in 1989 and 1990, and on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1991.

Faced with this delay, Dr. Vera took advantage of a totally different opportunity, to study at the French Petroleum Institute (Institut Francais du Petrole) in Paris, France, as part of an exchange program between IFP and the Energy Center in 1986-1987.  Upon returning to the United States in 1987, he moved back to the Washington D.C. area and became an energy forecaster at Decision Analysis Corporation (DAC), which provided consulting services to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).  While working at DAC, Dr. Vera became a citizen of the United States (in 1992) and finished his doctoral program in 1994. Also in 1994, Dr. Vera began to work directly at DoE.

While working at the DoE, Dr. Vera applied for a position at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Paris, France. He moved there with his wife and children in 1995. During the six years he worked at the NEA, Dr. Vera gained experience and expertise in international conferences and meetings devoted to nuclear energy, environmental issues, and the mining of uranium. This gave him the background necessary for his next position as a project manager at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, Austria. He and his family moved there in 2001.  At the IAEA, Dr. Vera expanded beyond nuclear energy to also become an expert in sustainable energy. During his time there, IAEA and its staff won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for the agency’s efforts “to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way.”

After six years in Vienna, in 2007 Dr. Vera earned a position with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in the Division for Sustainable Development at UN Headquarters in New York City. While there, he worked as a senior sustainable development officer, participating in the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012. He later became Chief of the Water, Energy, and Capacity Development Branch at UNDESA, focusing on projects that could promote the use of sustainable energy and water in developing countries while mitigating climate change. Since retiring from the UN in 2017, Dr. Vera continues to contribute to the efforts of international organizations to promote integrated energy and water programs as sustainable solutions to climate change.