Santiago Ramón y Cajal

"Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Maestro, científico y humanista" has the purpose of making known the essential aspects of the personality, work and commitment of the most important Spanish scientist of all time, inserting his biographical career in the historical coordinates, political and cultural of his time. Born into a humble family in Alto Aragón, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) soon manifested a personality, a will and a resolution that made him a teacher, a scientist and an extraordinary humanist. Father of modern neuroscience, to which he devoted fifty years of research, his discoveries were recognized by the international scientific community with the granting of prestigious distinctions, such as the Moscow Prize (1900), the Helmholtz Medal (1905) and, the most important , the Nobel Prize in Medicine (1906). Ramón y Cajal was not a laboratory scientist who remained on the margins of society. In his view, writers, researchers and artists should provide solutions to social problems. Thus, throughout his life he raised his voice together with Joaquín Costa, Benito Pérez Galdós and Miguel de Unamuno to demand the regeneration of public life, highlighting that education and science were the decisive levers to promote the modernization of Spain.