Advice for a Young Investigator

  • Santiago Raman y Cajal,
  • Neely Swanson &
  • Larry W. Swanson
MIT Press: 1999. 176 pp. $22.50, £15.50

Science as a career has never been an easy choice for a young person. For centuries it was the domain of philosophers and the enlightened rich; it only became a job at the turn of this century. Now, when unemployment and underemployment have become commonplace for young postdocs, how is it possible to envisage science as a choice? It may seem surprising to seek the advice of someone who wrote about this question a century ago, but the author is Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in many respects a unique personality in science.

The son of a country doctor, Cajal (1852-1932) was born in a little village in the north of Spain. He trained as a doctor himself and saw military service as a medical officer in the Cuban War of Independence before becoming professor of histology at several Spanish universities and developing a deep interest in the study of nerve cells. A critical and passionate writer, Cajal was so precise in his work that his drawings are still used in present-day publications and he remains one of the most cited authors of the life sciences. He was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine in 1906, and to this day is the only Spanish scientist to receive the prize for work done in his own country. He was active in promoting science, serving for more than 20 years as president of the Junta de Ampliacion de Estudios, one of the first European institutions designed to promote the education of young scientists by helping students to travel and carry out experiments.

Cajal's Advice for a Young Investigator includes chapters on the qualities needed to become a scientist, the problems the young investigator may encounter and the way to write scientific papers. The book's curious subtitle in Spanish — The Tonics of Will — is very typical of this author's ideas. The will is, according to Cajal, the main feature that the young scientist has to cultivate.

One hundred years after this book was written, it evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, most of the advice and comments on the practice of science are perfectly valid today. His description of the scientific method and the necessary attitude towards experiments and theories, for instance, are enriching for any present-day scientist. Anyone would recognize colleagues in his amusing descriptions of the different “diseases of the will” — sufferers include contemplators, bibliophiles, megalomaniacs and instrument addicts. His insistence that a young scholar should not be put off by the view that in science “the most important problems are solved” is also interesting. After what has happened during the past century in biology, one wonders what Cajal would think about present-day discussions on the ‘end’ of science.

On the other hand, the book is sometimes deliciously anachronistic. It strongly recommends studying foreign languages, especially German, “because it must be admitted that Germany alone produces more new data than all other nations combined when it comes to biology”. And he is completely politically incorrect when he recommends as the ideal wife for a scientist one who “belongs to him, whose best dowry will be a sensitive compliance with his wishes, and a warm and full-hearted acceptance of her husband's view of life”. This advice is out of place in our labs full of young women but, from a historical point of view, the whole chapter deserves consideration.

The same is true when he praises patriotism as a source of motivation for the young scholar. Maybe some of these aspects are lost in the translation that converts nineteenth-century Spanish into modern English, and by the deletion of the last chapters, containing his analysis of the reasons for Spain's lack of standing in world science. Many of his comments in these chapters are, unfortunately, perfectly valid today.

The book was written by a person who had to work very hard to achieve an international standing in science, and who came from a country that was struggling to get away from its decadent imperialist tradition. He succeeded in building an easy relationship with the international scientific community and, following a rigorous methodology, he became influential as few other scientists have been.

Bearing in mind the distance in time and culture, you are left with the feeling that a high proportion of his advice is valid. It is written in the candid style of a person devoted to science and willing to help young people on the verge of making a decision that was as difficult a century ago as it is today.

Also new in translation

Of Flies, Mice & Men: On the Revolution in Modern Biology, By One of the Scientists Who Helped Make It François Jacob, translated by Giselle Weiss Harvard University Press, $24 “It is just wonderful to read about genetics and to be reminded of details from the classics one has almost forgotten. If there were more books like this, genetics might not be under such an attack as it is now. It would be part of European culture”. Benno Müller-Hill, Nature 386, 668–669 (1997)

And some contemporary advice for graduate students

A Student's Guide to Graduate School in the Sciences by Dale F. Bloom, Jonathan D. Karp & Nicholas Cohen Oxford University Press, $16.95, £11.99 (pbk)