Camillo Golgi

Golgi, Camillo 

Born July 7. 1844, in Cortona; died Jan. 21, 1926, in Pavia. Italian histologist: named professor at the University of Pavia in 1875.

Golgi developed the chrome-silver method of preparing specimens of nerve tissue for the microscope (1873). which made it possible to see the silhouetted images of neurons with all of their processes, and thus to study and classify all of the neuronal forms of the cerebral cortex. This advance in turn opened the way for solution to the problem of the relationship between structure and function. In modern neurohistology a Golgi cell of type 1 is distinguished by a long axon that extends beyond the neural center in which the cell is located, and a Golgi cell of type 2 by a short axon that branches and ends in the same part of the gray matter in which the body of the cell is located. Golgi also described the special intracellular organelle now known as the Golgi apparatus. Golgi received the Nobel Prize in 1906, which he shared with Ramón y Cajal.

WORKS

Sulla fina anatomia degli organi centrali dei sistema nervoso. Milan. 1885.
Untersuchungen über den feineren Bau des centralen und peripherischen Nervensystems: Text und Atlas. Jena, 1894.
Opera omnia, vols. 1–3. Milan. 1903.

REFERENCE

“Professor Camillo Golgi.” British Medical Journal, 1926, vol. I, p. 221.