IT 
EN Conference: “Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal: The Birth of Modern Neurology”
- 23 October 2026 17:00 - 20:00
Language: Italian
On the centenary of the death of Camillo Golgi (1843-1926), on Friday, October 23, Museo Galileo will host the conference Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal: The Birth of Modern Neurology, held as part of the initiative “Mente in fuga”.
In 1906, Golgi and Cajal jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system.” Both had studied nervous tissue using the “black reaction”, the silver impregnation method developed by Golgi in 1873, yet they arrived at opposite conclusions: Golgi viewed the nervous system as a continuous network, while Cajal saw it as a set of distinct cells, the neurons. Modern neuroscience was born from that very controversy.
The proceedings will be introduced and moderated by Lorenzo Lorusso and Matteo Gregorini. The programme will open with a keynote presentation by Donatella Lippi, historian of medicine, and will continue across three sessions.
The first session, dedicated to Golgi and the Pavia school, will feature contributions from Vittorio A. Sironi, Paolo Mazzarello, and Stefano Zago.
The second session, addressing Golgi’s material memory and the figure of Cajal, will feature Ilaria Fuso, Fernando de Castro, and Marco Piccolino.
The third session, focused on the Nobel controversy, historical slides, and neuroaesthetics, will feature presentations by Francesco Brigo, Virginia García-Marín, and Francesco Goretti, from the Museo Galileo Neuroaesthetics Laboratory, in collaboration with the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS).
The conference will conclude with a round table open to discussion with the public.
On the occasion of the conference, two display panels dedicated to the two scientists will be presented, retracing their lives, method, and controversy through original drawings, histological preparations, and photographs from the Pavia and Madrid archives. The volume Golgi and Cajal. A comparative history, edited by Maria Pia Amato, Francesco Brigo, Matteo Gregorini, Lorenzo Lorusso, and Luca Massacesi, will also be presented.
Admission is free, but registration is required.
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