History
Santiago Ramon y Cajal, considered the father of modern neuroscience, was one of the first to physically observe growing axons. Moreover, he observed that axons grew in a structured, guided manner. He advocated that axons were guided by chemotactic cues. Indeed, later experiments showed that in both invertebrate and vertebrate models, axons grew along pre-determined routes to create a reproducible scaffold of nerves.
Ramon y Cajal's views faced some competition from those of Paul Alfred Weiss, his contemporary neuroscientist during the 1920s and 1930s. Weiss argued that functional specificity did not depend on specific axon connections, and that nonspecific mechanical cues participated in guiding axons. Subsequent investigations into chemotactics cues that started in the 1970s eventually proved that Ramon y Cajal's initial ideas were intuitive and ahead of his time.
Read more about this topic: Pioneer Axon
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)