Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigator - PMC

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Cerebrum<br>. 2016 Sep 1;2016:cer-11-16.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigator

Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson, Ph.D.

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Collection date 2016 Sep-Oct.

Copyright 2016 The Dana Foundation All Rights Reserved

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PMCID: PMC5198756  PMID: 28058093

Editor’s Note:

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a mythic figure in science and recognized as the father of modern anatomy and neurobiology, was largely responsible for the modern conception of the brain. The first to publish on the nervous system, he sought to educate the novice scientist about how he thought science should be done. We asked an accomplished young investigator to take a fresh look at this recently rediscovered classic, first published in 1897.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigator might more accurately be titled Advice for a Young Provincial Investigator. Cajal, a renowned neuroanatomist who remains Spain’s only Nobel Laureate in the sciences, wrote this and essentially all his works in turn of the century Madrid, and he acutely felt his distance from the capitals of European science. Paradoxically, however, this may well make the work more relevant to the young investigator in the globalized, interconnected world of today, for many obstacles to success are timeless struggles of the soul, and most of us are provincial in one sense or another. So, if you have just been elected a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows or have been anointed as brilliant, congratulations! There is little of use to you here. But if, like the vast majority, you hail from a rural university, a small liberal arts college, an underfunded hospital, or, yes, a struggling nation, then Advice, if not required reading, will at the very least repay the two afternoons it will take to absorb.

What is the advice of Advice? I distill seven themes, below, but I’ll also note that one of his important instructions is to learn from, but never trust, the work of commentators. I endorse that caveat; what will resonate in this rich volume will necessarily differ for each of its readers.

1. The only thing in your power is your preparation

The role of chance in science is as undeniable as it is irreducible. You can do nothing to ensure success; there are no logical rules of discovery. But you can prepare yourself, and you must, so that when the unexpected finding, or odd phenomenon, or technological breakthrough occurs, it can be you who is best equipped to grasp its significance. Preparing means mastering bodies of knowledge and techniques known to be relevant, but also—and here I borrow not from Advice but from Cajal’s remarkable biography—recognizing that sometimes knowledge and skills acquired from the necessity of circumstance will prove critical. So it was for Cajal, who, initially indifferent to medicine and needing a trade, was apprenticed to a barber. This granted such dexterity with a razor that when he finally came to the study of anatomy, his histological preparations were unusually skillful, enabling him able to see neural structures with exceptional clarity.

2. Be suspicious of “brilliance”

This theme is really a corollary of the first, but leads to a different moral. Brilliance is mastery of skills and knowledge known to be important. It of course often leads to opportunity and success. But undue focus on this quality can engender worship of yesterday’s abilities and insights, and this can hold individuals—indeed, entire fields—back. Never let perceived lack of ability limit you— especially when it’s a self-perception. “Lack of ability” may simply be a set of skills waiting for its moment. Science needs a variety of minds. Besides, as Cajal writes, “work substitutes for talent, or better…it creates talent.” The scientist’s single most important virtue is perseverance.

3. Be appropriately respectful of authority, but no more

No theory, no method, and no experimental paradigm is perfect. Do not defend or dismiss the errors of your teachers; use them to identify new problems to solve.

4. Balance concentration and relaxation

Finding the time and space for extended and total concentration on a problem is vital. On...