The birth of contemporary neuroscience: Golgi and Cajal (and Nansen)

 I know that this post is a bit off topic regarding the main theme of this blog, but since I work in the field of neuroscience, I thought it could be interesting to some of the readers. 

I just found out a very good lecture about the birth of the field of modern neuroscience, where the lecturer, Paolo Mazzarello, tells the story of the life, work and bitter rivalry between the neuroscientists Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal. They ended up sharing the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine of 1906, "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system". Both have significantly contributed to the contemporary view of neuronal theory.

The lecture is, unfortunately, totally in Italian, but if you fall in the skewed intersection of neuroscience nerd and Italian speaker, this lecture is for you. You can find it at this link. 

If Italian is not your forte, you can also see a simplified, shortened, but still entertaining retelling of this story in this link (in English). 

Later I found out another lecture (also in italian) where the role of the Norwegian polymath Fridtjof Nansen in the development of the neuronal theory adds some less known details to this story. 


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