Which of the following researchers observed densely stained reticular structures surrounding the nucleus (Hint: Figure)?

Correct — D. Camillo Golgi reported a densely stained network around the nucleus of nerve cells in 1898, found with the silver staining method he had devised. He called it the internal reticular apparatus, and it is now the Golgi apparatus.

The picture printed with the question is a small unlabelled drawing of a stack of curved, flattened sacs with rounded vesicles at their edges — the textbook image of that organelle.

Option (d) is the only one of the four who described the architecture of an organelle; the other three worked on the whole body, on a molecule and on micro-organisms.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  William Harvey — William Harvey worked out the circulation of the blood, published in 1628. That is whole-body physiology, not an organelle inside a cell.
• (b)
  Francis Crick — Francis Crick, with James Watson, proposed the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 — a molecular model, and half a century after Golgi's observation.
• (c)
  Louis Pasteur — Louis Pasteur established the germ theory of disease and gave us pasteurisation and the rabies vaccine. His subject was micro-organisms, not the architecture of a cell.

Golgi's advance was a stain, not a lens. His black reaction, using silver nitrate, blackened a small fraction of cells completely and left the rest clear, so a single neuron could be seen whole against a pale field.

With it he found a fine, densely stained reticulum around the nucleus. The organelle now named after him receives proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum, modifies and sorts them, and dispatches them in vesicles.

Golgi shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Santiago Ramón y Cajal for work on the structure of the nervous system.

Key facts

• Camillo Golgi described the internal reticular apparatus in 1898 using his silver staining method.
• The Golgi apparatus modifies, sorts and packages proteins received from the endoplasmic reticulum.
• Golgi shared the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

Common traps

• Picking a famous biologist by fame rather than by field
• Letting the word reticular pull you towards the endoplasmic reticulum, which is a different organelle

No directly related past PYQ was found.