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RAMON Y CAJAL, SANTIAGO

(1852–1934)
Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934) is famous in
Spain as its sole Nobel Prize winner. He shared the
prize in Medicine in 1906 with Golgi. His professional
practice was a principal but not sole driver of his inter-
est in photography.
His passion for photography dated back to his child-
hood, with his introduction to the amazing detail of
daguerreotypes. He practiced many of the various pro-
cess advances as they came along, including ‘inhaling
the delicious aroma of collodion’ and then the beautiful
gelatine-bromide emulsions.
He was important for photography in Spain and
internationally as he experimented with and published
papers and books on numerous processes in the late
1800s and early 1900s, especially in stereo and in the
new color technologies as they emerged, and in his
pursuit of color images of microscopic subjects. He
promoted photography in Spain, and when the Photo-
graphic Society of Madrid was founded in 1899 (later
the Royal Photographic Society) he was named honor-
ary President.
He experimented with many processes, especially
the Autochrome process, and contributed to getting
consistent results with the Lippmann process. With his
skills as a microscopist it was easy for him to section
his Lippmann images and directly show their internal
layered structure (others who published such sections
included Edgar Senior, Richard Neuhauss, Herbert Ives
and Hermann Krone). Some of his conventional images,
including a beautiful autochrome self-portrait, are in the
collections of the Instituto Cajal in Madrid. His draft
for his book on color photography (1912), held at the
National Library, is hand illustrated in color. A view of
it is reproduced in Sougez’s Historia de la Fotografi a
(1991).

Besides the book, which received wide use in Spain,

and his articles in technical journals all over Europe, he

published a number of articles on photography, stereo

photography and color photography in popular Spanish

journals.

His Nobel was for his pioneering efforts in the de-

velopment of contrast-enhancing stains for microscope

slides and for his drawings of the microscopy of the

human nervous system, including the delineation of

neurons and their connections. These drawings still set

a standard for accuracy in current medicine, and his

stains are still in use. He and Golgi were at odds over

the nature of the neuronal system. Cajal’s viewpoint is

more in line with the modern one.

William R. Alschuler

See also: Daguerreotype; Spain; and Neuhauss,

Richard.

Further Reading

Ramon y Cajal, S., La Fotografi a de los Colores, Madrid: Moya,

1912. (reprinted: Madrid: CLAN, 1991)
      ——, Las placas autocromos de Lumiere y el problema de las
      copias multiples [Lumiere Autochrome plates and the prob-
      lem of multiple copies], in La Fotografi a, Madrid: no. 73,
      October 1907.
      Sougez, M.-L., Historia de la Fotografi a (History of Photogra-
      phy), (4th ed.), Madrid: Catedra, 1991.

RAOULT, JEAN (IVAN PETROVICH)

(active 1860s–1880s)

Professional photographer

French by birth, Jean Raoul was owned a photographic

studio in Odessa in 1860-1880s. He created ethno-

graphic photographic studies in many areas of Russia.

In late 1870s Raoul published the album “Collection de