Golgi, Camillo (kämēl`lō gôl`jē), 1844–1926, Italian physician, noted as a neurologist and histologist. He shared with Ramón y Cajal the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on the structure of the nervous system. He introduced (c.1870) a method of staining nerve tissue with silver nitrate that he used (1883) to demonstrate certain nerve cells (Golgi cells) in the central nervous system. He observed (1909) the Golgi apparatus, a part of the cytoplasm distinguishable by special staining and known as the Golgi bodies when in the form of separate particles. He recognized that the three types of malaria are caused by different protozoan organisms. Golgi taught at the Univ. of Pavia from 1875.

Golgi, Camillo

Golgi, 1906

(credit: Courtesy of the Wellcome Trustees)

(born July 7, 1843/44, Corteno, Italy—died Jan. 21, 1926, Pavia) Italian physician and cytologist. He devised a way to stain nerve tissue and with it discovered a neuron, now called the Golgi cell, that has many short, branching extensions (dendrites) and connects other neurons. This led to identification of the neuron as the basic structural unit of the nervous system. He also discovered the Golgi tendon organ (the point at which sensory nerve fibres branch out within a tendon) and the Golgi apparatus (a cell organelle that packages large molecules for transport). He shared a 1906 Nobel Prize with Santiago Ramón y Cajal (b. 1852—d. 1934).