One hundred years of the Golgi apparatus: history of a disputed cell organelle

In April 1898 at the Medico-Surgical Society of Pavia, Camillo Golgi communicated his finding of a novel intracellular structure, which he had detected in nerve cells by means of a variant of the "black reaction" he had developed earlier for the staining of the nervous tissue. On the basis of the "netlike" appearance and intracellular location of this structure, Golgi defined it as "internal reticular apparatus". The reality of the organelle was debated for fifty years, since some investigators believed that the structure, which was soon designated as Golgi apparatus, represented an artifact of metallic impregnation. The controversy was finally solved in the mid-1950s by studies based on electron microscopy. Linked to the cell organelle he had discovered, Golgi's contributions to cytology had a great impact on biomedical sciences of the twentieth century.