International recognition of Cajal began at the Congreso de la Sociedad Anatómica Alemana (Berlin, October 1889). Addressing some of the leading neuroscientists of his time, Cajal presented and defended his neuronal theory. Acknowledgments came in cascade thereafter: in 1894 he delivered the famous Croonian Lecture, where he addressed the Royal Society, and the University of Cambridge awarded him with an honorary doctorate; In 1896 he received the Fauvelle Prize of the Society of Biology of Paris and was invited to the Society of Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, as well as being appointed doctor honoris causa by the University of Würzburg. His most prestigious international awards: Award Moscow International Congress of Medicine (1900), the Helmholtz Medal of the Imperial Academy in Berlin (1905) and the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (1906).
Joaquín Sorolla Bastida, Retrato de Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1906. Museo de Zaragoza.