The blessed neuroscientist

[image error]Neurosurgery has an article on the 17th Century neuroanatomist Niels Stensen who not only made major contributions to our understanding of the brain but was beatified - the first step to becoming a saint - by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

His work was not restricted to the brain and was a founding figure in both geology and palaeontology, but his willingness to test received wisdom with regard to brain anatomy led him to overturn some key assumptions of the time:

Stensen contested the anatomic...