In the eminently geeky series The Big Bang Theory (Season 6, episode 16, titled "The Tangible Affection Proof", translated as "The Tangible Proof of Affection"), Seldon asks his assistant Alex to get Amy a gift. Valentine’s day .
The third option is an engraving of neurons signed by Santiago Ramón y Cajal , the father of neuroscience. Sheldon is so impressed that he decides to keep it to himself.
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
The other two options Sheldon rules out gifting Amy are:
- A map of England showing the travels of the characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales .
- An original music box in the shape of a harp.
He prefers to stay with Santiago Ramón y Cajal , who also drew brain cells by hand. Such as this:
Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 – 1934), Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906 for discovering the functioning that regulates the connective processes of nerve cells, the starting point of the so-called Neuron Doctrine.
Thanks to Ramón y Cajal’s detailed histological examinations, the synaptic cleft was discovered, a space of between 20 and 40 nanometers that separates neurons; this space suggested communication by chemical messengers that passed through the cleft and allowed communication between neurons.
He proposed the existence of dendritic spines, a small protrusion in the membrane of the dendritic tree of certain neurons where, typically, the synapse occurs with an axonal button of another neuron, and sometimes several axons contact. Proof of this only came after electron microscopy was developed during the second decade of the 20th century.