Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Person
Born
Santiago Ramón y Cajal wanted to be a painter as a boy, but his father pushed him into medicine. He shared the 1906 Nobel prize for showing that the nervous system is made of separate cells, neurons, and he made his case through thousands of detailed ink drawings of brain tissue. Those drawings, once purely scientific evidence, now tour art museums, so the childhood ambition was fulfilled after all.
More about Santiago Ramón y Cajal