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Title details for The Brain in Search of Itself by Benjamin Ehrlich - Available

The Brain in Search of Itself

Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron

by Benjamin Ehrlich
Timothy Andrés Pabon
Audiobook
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Unless you're a neuroscientist, Santiago Ramón y Cajal is likely the most important figure in the history of biology you've never heard of. Along with Darwin and Pasteur, he ranks among the most brilliant and original biologists of the nineteenth century, and his discoveries have done for our understanding of the human brain what the work of Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton did for our conception of the physical universe.
Benjamin Ehrlich's The Brain in Search of Itself is the first major biography in English of this figure, whose scientific odyssey mirrored the rocky journey of his beloved homeland of Spain into the twentieth century. A portrait of a nation as well a biography, The Brain in Search of Itself follows Cajal from the hinterlands to Barcelona and Madrid, where he became an illustrious figure. Cajal devised a theory that was as controversial in his time as it is universal in ours: that the nervous system is comprised of individual cells with distinctive roles.
In our age of neuro-imaging and investigations into the neural basis of the mind, Cajal is the artistic and scientific forefather we must get to know. The Brain in Search of Itself is at once the story of how the brain as we know it came into being and a finely wrought portrait of an individual as fantastical and complex as the subject to which he devoted his life.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 5, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666166354
      • File size: 338714 KB
      • Duration: 11:45:39

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 6, 2021
      Neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) merits a spot “among Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton as one of the greatest scientists of all time,” writes journalist Ehrlich (The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal) in this serviceable biography. Cajal won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work demonstrating that the brain is composed of individual cells rather than being a single integrated mass, and Ehrlich concisely describes Cajal’s scientific work and situates him within the tumultuous political scene in Spain during his lifetime. Born in Petilla, Cajal was “willful and restless” as a child, then a poor student who was interested primarily in art, but was pushed by his father to study medicine. Ehrlich’s Cajal is a complicated individual, one who largely shaped Spain’s scientific culture (as its “public representative”), supported liberal politics while retaining a belief in the Spanish monarchy, and promoted opportunities for women while denouncing various aspects of feminism. But the author never quite explains how science took hold of him or what made him tick. Ehrlich does a fine job of laying out the particulars of his subject’s life, but readers desiring insight into his personality will be left wanting.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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