Page 171 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

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sculpting your brain

his time, eleven-year-old Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s crime had been to build
T a small cannon and blow a neighbor’s new, large wooden gate into
splinters. In rural Spain of the 1860s, there weren’t many options for oddball
juvenile delinquents. That’s how the young Cajal found himself locked in a flea-

ridden jail.
Cajal was stubborn and rebellious. He had a single overwhelming passion:
art. But what could he do with painting and drawing? Especially since Cajal
ignored the rest of his studies—particularly math and science, which he thought
were useless.
Cajal’s father, Don Justo, was a strict man who had brought himself up from

virtually nothing. The family was definitely not on aristocratic easy street. To try
and give his son much-needed discipline and stability, Don Justo apprenticed
him out to a barber. This was a disaster, as Cajal just neglected his studies even
further. Beaten and starved by his teachers in an attempt to bring him around,
Cajal was a mocking, shocking disciplinary nightmare.