Golgi's Got an Axon to Grind

Greetings fellow behavioral neuroscientists. Welcome to the inaugural post of our course blog. Did you know that scientists are human too? Prone to fits of jealously and filled with boundless ego, scientists can be considered the ultimate 'Frenemy.'

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Camillo Golgi

Take for example the well-documented friction between noted neuroanatomists, Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. The basic dispute centered around the fundamental organization of the brain. Golgi believed that the brain was made up of a single interlinking network (called the Reticular Theory); whereas Cajal thought that nervous system is made up of discrete individual cells (the Neuron Theory).

Unfortunately, this dispute was not resolved in either of these two men's lifetimes (although Cajal's thoery was eventually proven true). Nevertheless, both men achieved great success and notoriety, and even shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Surprisingly, even this prestigious award wasn't enough to bury the hatchet between Golgi and Cajal. Golgi even used his Nobel Prize speech as a opportunity to attempt to discredit Cajal (if you want to read the actual transcript of Golgi's lecture, click here).