GOLGI: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NEUROSCIENCE

by Paolo Mazzarello , 512 pp., Oxford University Press, 2010, $69.95 This biography extensively documents not only of the life of Camillo Golgi, co-winner of the 1906 Noble Prize in Medicine or Physiology, but also superbly summarizes his discovery of the “black reaction” staining dendrites and axons, the reticular system (Golgi apparatus), and life cycles of parasites. Mazzarello exposes Golgi's errors in constructing and then doggedly defending the reticular theory of neuroanatomy, and his struggles to strengthen the University of Pavia Medical School, his alma mater. In chapter 2, Mazzarello recounts Golgi's ancestry, as well as elementary and medical schooling. Chapter 3 expertly epitomizes the evolution …