Santiago Ramon y Cajal, 1852-1934

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, foreign member of the Society, died at his home, Madrid, on October 18, 1934, in his 83rd year. Strength of intellect and character had won him, in face of adverse circumstances, high and international position in the world of science. He had become in his own country a very symbol to the people of cultural revival of the nation. He had passed his early childhood in the mountain village of Petilla, where he was native, on the southern Pyreneean slope. His father practised surgery there among the peasants, himself of peasant stock, a doctor’s boy who had later acquired a barber-surgeon licence. Compact of energy and ambition, his father had by dint of grim economies moved later to Zaragoza, the University town. Little Santiago at school showed precocity. When not yet seven he was scribe for the family during an absence of his father in Madrid. But as he grew older the boy proved headstrong, with likes and dislikes intense and passionate. Thus, his love of watching birds on an occasion kept the countryside scouring for him in vain all night, with morning to discover him half up a precipice beside a martin’s nest where he had waited daybreak unable to get farther up or down. His other passion was to sketch : a sheet of paper made his fingers tingle to draw something—anything ; the mule kicking, the hen sitting, the castle on the height, the toper at the inn. Some of this draughtsmanship is extant and published. His father disapproved it ; he feared it might divert his son from medicine. So it was that the boy was packed off to Jaca, to the College of the Aesculapian Fathers. There Latin was a corner-stone of the instruction. Young Santiago, like young Helmholtz, could not learn by simple memorization ; the Latin teaching given required that. The college discipline was severe. Punishment came and grew relentless—the rod, incarceration, and prison-fare. The lad’s reaction became uncompromising rebellion. So was it that he was discharged, thin and sullen, silent about Jaca save for a rhapsody on the beauty of its valley.