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12.11.2010

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RAMON Y CAJAL, SANTIAGO
(1852–1934)

Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934) is famous in Spain as its sole Nobel Prize winner. He shared the prize in Medicine in 1906 with Golgi. His professional practice was a principal but not sole driver of his inter- est in photography.
His passion for photography dated back to his child- hood, with his introduction to the amazing detail of daguerreotypes. He practiced many of the various pro- cess advances as they came along, including ‘inhaling the delicious aroma of collodion’ and then the beautiful gelatine-bromide emulsions.
He was important for photography in Spain and internationally as he experimented with and published papers and books on numerous processes in the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially in stereo and in the new color technologies as they emerged, and in his pursuit of color images of microscopic subjects. He promoted photography in Spain, and when the Photo- graphic Society of Madrid was founded in 1899 (later the Royal Photographic Society) he was named honor- ary President.
He experimented with many processes, especially the Autochrome process, and contributed to getting consistent results with the Lippmann process. With his skills as a microscopist it was easy for him to section his Lippmann images and directly show their internal layered structure (others who published such sections included Edgar Senior, Richard Neuhauss, Herbert Ives and Hermann Krone). Some of his conventional images, including a beautiful autochrome self-portrait, are in the collections of the Instituto Cajal in Madrid. His draft for his book on color photography (1912), held at the National Library, is hand illustrated in color. A view of it is reproduced in Sougez’s Historia de la Fotografia (1991).
Besides the book, which received wide use in Spain, and his articles in technical journals all over Europe, he published a number of articles on photography, stereo photography and color photography in popular Spanish journals.
His Nobel was for his pioneering efforts in the de- velopment of contrast-enhancing stains for microscope slides and for his drawings of the microscopy of the human nervous system, including the delineation of neurons and their connections. These drawings still set a standard for accuracy in current medicine, and his stains are still in use. He and Golgi were at odds over the nature of the neuronal system. Cajal’s viewpoint is more in line with the modern one.

RAOULT, JEAN (IVAN PETROVICH) (active 1860s–1880s)
Professional photographer

French by birth, Jean Raoul was owned a photographic studio in Odessa in 1860-1880s. He created ethno- graphic photographic studies in many areas of Russia. In late 1870s Raoul published the album “Collection de types des Peuples de Russie, Roumanie et Bulgarie,” a collection of “folk types,” shots of everyday life and surroundings, mostly from Russia’s south, which consisted of more than 200 photographs. Raoul’s pho- tographs of 1880s depicting landscapes, the people and theantiquesoftheCaucasus,theCrimeaandtheVolga river were also assembled into albums. In 1877–1878, during the Russian-Turkish War, Raoul travelled to Romania and Bulgaria where he photographed the military actions of the Russian forces. In 1879–1882 during the expedition to the Northern Caucasus, Georgia and Armenia and later to Athos and Palestina devoted to the searching for the Christian antiques Raoul was a photographer accompanying Prof. N. P. Kondakov. In 1884 staying in Constantinople after one of Kondakov’s expeditions, Raoul decided to returne to France. In 1890s he owned a photographic studio in the south of France. He won prices at the Paris Geo- graphic Exhibition (1875) and at the World Exhibition in Paris (1878) for photographs of people of Moldavia, Bessarabia and Odessa.

RAU, WILLIAM HERMAN (1855–1920)
American photographer

William Herman Rau, a successful commercial pho- tographer, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 19, 1855 to German and Swiss immigrant parents Peter and Mary Elizabeth Witschi Rau. He began his photographic career at thirteen as an assis- tant to Philadelphia photographer William Bell, and in 1874 served as a photographer with the United States government’s Transit of Venus expedition in the South Pacific, the first of many photographic journeys. In 1881 he and Philadelphia photographer Edward L. Wilson embarked on a photographic trip through the Middle East, and Rau made subsequent photographic journeys to many other countries including Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, England, and Mexico. In 1891 and in 1893 he received the important commis- sion of photographically documenting the Pennsylvania Railroad’s lines for promotional purposes, and in 1895 received a similar commission from the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Rau also served as the official photographer for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and the 1905 Louis and Clark Exposition. From 1886 until his death he operated a busy commercial studio in Philadelphia with an extensive stock of lantern slides. Rau was active in photographic associations including the American Lantern Slide Interchange and the Photographic Society of Philadelphia. William Rau died in Philadelphia on November 19, 1920.

READE, JOSEPH BANCROFT (1801–1870)
English chemist

The Reverend Joseph Bancroft Reade was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, and was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England at the age of twenty-four.
His interests in chemistry date from an early age, and interests in science and microscopy endured for most of his life. He served as President of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1869 and 1870.
Of particular interest in considering his engagement with photography is a letter he wrote in 1839, quoted by Sir David Brewster in 1847, describing a photo- graphic process involving the use of silver nitrate and gallic acid, and which was fixed with ‘hypo.’ Brewster asserted that Reade’s successful experiments may have predated Talbot’s calotype patent by up to two years. It was later claimed that, having lectured on his process in 1839, Reade had ‘published’ his process before Talbot’s patent was granted.
Research has demonstrated, however, that the reports of Reade’s lecture and letter were partial and the dates incorrect. His process was a modification of Talbot’s photogenic drawing process, and his reference to hypo post-dated Herschel’s publication of his researches on the chemical.
Notwithstanding that, Reade’s ‘priority’ was quoted by lawyers for Martin Laroche in the court case Talbot v Laroche in 1854, in an attempt to undermine Talbot’s legal position.

REEVE, LOVELL AUGUSTUS (1814–1865)
English publisher of photography

Through his many publications Lovell Reeve advanced public expectation of the photographically illustrated book.
Born in London, Reeve was apprenticed to a grocer, but his interests quickly focused on natural history and his first book, Conchologia Systematica, was published in 1842 or 1843. His interest in shells and natural his- tory in turn led to an engagement with stereoscopic photography.
His first book as publisher, in 1858, was Charles Piazzi Smyth’s Tenneriffe: An Astronomer’s Experi- ment, the first book to be photographically illustrated with stereographs. It presented twenty pairs of prints mounted on the octavo pages of the book, and Reeve initially commissioned Negretti & Zambra to design and manufacture a stereo viewer especially for viewing book-mounted images.
The Stereoscopic Magazine first appeared in July 1858, and continued until early 1863, publishing three stereo images per month, by Fenton, Howlett and oth- ers, with accompanying texts ‘by Writers of Eminence.’ Reeve also published periodic sets of stereo cards under the umbrella title The Stereoscopic Cabinet.
The Conway in the Stereoscope with text by James Davidson and twenty stereographs by Roger Fenton, was published in 1860, and additionally contained ad- vertisements for other proposed publications and sets of images, several of which are presumed never to have been published. Many of the images from the book were re-published in The Stereoscopic Magazine.

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