Golgi : a biography of the founder of modern neuroscience
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Bibliographic Information
Golgi : a biography of the founder of modern neuroscience
Oxford University Press, 2010
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Nobel dimenticato
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book is a complete biography of Camillo Golgi one of the most prominent European researcher between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, a period of dramatic scientific development. The life of Golgi was an extraordinary intellectual adventure in three major fields of biology and medicine, namely the neuroscience, the emerging cell biology and the new science of medical microbiology.
In 1873 Golgi published the description of a revolutionary histological technique which allowed, for the first time, to visualize a single nerve cell with all its ramification which could be followed and analyzed even at a great distance from the cell bodies, the so called "black reaction" (later named the "Golgi method"). This invention provided the spark to a truly scientific revolution which allowed the morphology and the basic architecture of the cerebral tissue to be evidenced in all its
complexity, thus contributing to the foundation of the modern neuroscience. It has been written that, in the same way Galileo Galilei was able to find new stars observing with his telescope any sky region, Golgi was able to find new nervous structures and nerve cells by applying his black reaction to
any brain region. Finally, the details of the most complex structure in the known universe, the brain, could be characterized.
Golgi also strongly contributed to the development of cell biology with the discovery of one of the major organelles of the cell, the "internal reticular apparatus" (later named the "Golgi apparatus" or the "Golgi complex" or simply "the Golgi") and to medical microbiology with his description of the human malaria parasitic development inside the red blood cells (Golgi cycle).
He was also a prominent political figure who deeply influenced the Nineteenth century development of science in Italy.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction: Between revolution and conservatism
2 "He who studies German is a traitor"
3 The Reborn Athens
4 The histological path to the secrets of the brain
5 A rudimentary laboratory in a small kitchen
6 Like a tree in the forest
7 Globules, granules and fibers
8 Finding a way out of the labyrinth
9 The Professor is in love
10 Sensory corpuscles, funnels and transfusions
11 Neuroanatomical investigations
12 Controversies and various studies
13 The secret of the intermittent fevers
14 A duel for Anna Kulischioff
15 The Malaria of the Polemics
16 The prophets of the neuron
17 Seemingly a matter of priority
18 Protoplasmic pantheism
19 Golgi versus Ramon y Cajal: Holism versus reductionism at the dawn of the neurosciences
20 The historical paradox of neurosciences
21 An intense laboratory life
22 The threat from Milan
23 An Elegant Reticulum "Hidden in the Cell Body"
24 The laboratory where a discovery is made every day
25 Beauty and Cold in Stockholm
26 Back to Research
27 Years of sorrow
28 The veil of Isis
29 Working unto death
Appendix
Publications by Camillo Golgi
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"