Women Neuroscientist Disciples of Pío del Río-Hortega: the Cajal School Spreads in Europe and South America

Abstract

Pio del Rio-Hortega was not only the discoverer of the microglia and oligodendroglia but also possibly the most prolific mentor of all Santiago Ramon y Cajal's disciples (Nobel awardee in Physiology or Medicine 1906 and considered as the father of modern Neuroscience). Among Río-Hortega's mentees, three exceptional women are frequently forgotten, chronologically: Pio's niece Asunción Amo del Río who worked with Río-Hortega at Madrid, Paris, and Oxford; the distinguished British neuropathologist Dorothy Russell who also worked with Don Pío at Oxford; and Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi, the last mentee in his career. Our present work analyzes the figures of these three women who were in contact and collaborated with Don Pío del Río-Hortega, describing the influences received and the impact on their careers and the History of Neuroscience. The present work completes the contribution of women neuroscientists who worked with Cajal and his main disciples of the Spanish Neurological School both in Spain (previous work) and in other countries (present work).

Keywords: Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi; Dorothy Russell; Spanish Neurological School; female neuroscientists; history of neuroscience; microglia; oligodendrocyte; pioneer female scientists.

FIGURE 1

Asunción Amo del Río. (A) Young Asunción Amo del Río (on the left) with her mother and her grandfather Juan at Portillo (Valladolid). (B) Detail of the report by Hugh Cairns (see the signature, below) to the Nuffield Committee proposing the appointment of “Senorita [sic] Del Río” as laboratory attendant of Pío del Río-Hortega. (C) Río-Hortega (on feet) and his niece and attendant, Asunción Amo del Río, at the laboratory of Neuropathology of the Nuffield Department, University of Oxford. (D) Dr. Pío del Río-Hortega (on the left), Asunción Amo del Río (in the middle), and Dr. William Gibson (on the right) developing their work in Neuropathology at the Nuffield Department, in Oxford, 1938.

FIGURE 2

Dr. Dorothy Russell. (A) Young Dorothy Russell circa 1919, while studying at The London Royal Hospital (taken from Women at Queen Mary Exhibition Online). (B) Original drawing of microglial and macrophage cells done by Dorothy Russell at Wilder Penfield’s laboratory and published in Russell (1929). (C,D) Dorothy Russell and Pío del Río-Hortega at the latter’s laboratory at the University of Oxford (1939–1940).

FIGURE 3

Pío del Río-Hortega in Argentina. (A) From the left to the right, Prof. Washington Buño, Dr. Pío del Río-Hortega, Moisés Polak, and Dr. Crosso, in Buenos Aires. (B) Front page of Río-Hortega’s paper entitled “The normal neuroglia. Concepts of ‘angiogliona’ and ‘neurogliona,”’ published in 1942 in honor of Hugh (del Río-Hortega, 1942). (C) Glial cells (A, C) and sensitive neurons (B, D, E) from the sensitive ganglia (del Río-Hortega et al., 1942). See on the bottom right corner one of the rare signatures of Pío del Río-Hortega in his original drawings (as: P.R.H.).

FIGURE 4

Prof. Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi. (A) Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi in 1960 at Buenos Aires, together with Prof. Eduardo De Robertis (seated on the left) and Dr. Pedro Antonio Rodríguez-Pérez (on feet), commissioned by the Instituto Cajal (Spain) for the acquisition of an electron microscope like the one in the picture. (B) Images of synaptic vesicles isolated from nerve terminals taken at the electron microscope from sections of rat brain, originally published by De Robertis et al. (1962) in Nature. (C) Young Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi admires a small bird in her hands. (D) Reproduction of the original portrait of Pío del Río-Hortega that Prof. Pellegrino de Iraldi had in her bureau. See the effects of time in the photograph.

FIGURE 5

The women disciples of Río-Hortega after the death of Don Pío (I). (A) Dr. Dorothy Russell at the microscope, during her scientific maturity. (B) First edition of the textbook on the tumors of the brain by Russell and Rubinstein (1959). (C) Fifth edition of the Russell and Rubenstein textbook (Russell and Rubinstein, 1989). (D) Dorothy Russell receives her doctor honoris causa from the University of Glasgow (1951).

FIGURE 6

The women disciples of Río-Hortega after the death of Don Pío (II). (A,B) Prof. Amanda Pellegrino de Iraldi substitutes Prof. Eduardo De Robertis (with her in B) as Director of the Instituto de Biología Celular of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. (C) Reception of the mortal remains of Pío del Río-Hortega at Valladolid city town-hall (1986). Source: Archives at the newspaper ABC, issue published on October 14, 1986. (D) Asunción Amo del Río (on the left) embraces her old friend Prof. Severo Ochoa (Nobel laureate 1959) during the reception of the mortal remains of Pío del Río-Hortega in Valladolid (1986). Source: Archives at the newspaper ABC, issue published on October 14, 1986. (E) Portrait of Asunción Amo del Río in her last days in Manzanares (Ciudad Real) in 2015.