The Medical Historical Library is pleased to announce a new gift of the José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado papers. His papers are a gift of Caroline Stoddard Delgado, wife of Dr. José M. R. Delgado, and children José Carlos and Linda Delgado, 2024.
José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado (1915-2011) was a Spanish physician, researcher, and professor who specialized in neurophysiology of the brain. He captured the world’s attention in the 1960s with his experiments using electrical stimulation of the brain to control the actions of mammals, primates, and human subjects. Delgado earned his medical degree and a doctorate in physiology from the Universidad Central in Madrid. He came to Yale in 1946 as a fellow in the laboratory of John Fulton, a neurophysiologist, chair of the Department of Physiology, and one of the Medical Library’s founders. By 1953 Delgado was an assistant professor and became director of research following Fulton’s death in 1960.
He returned to Spain in 1974 to organize a new medical school. In 2004, Delgado returned to the United States, settling in California. Delgado published hundreds of articles throughout his career, in multiple languages, several books, and was an inventor, pioneering methods for the implantation of electrodes to treat neurological disorders.
The items in the gift document Delgado's professional life and include correspondence, manuscript and published writings, lectures, research, interviews, photographs and photographic slides, audio visual materials, original drawings for scientific publications by Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934), scrapbooks, clippings, and neural stimulation equipment built by Delgado. For access to the collection, please contact the Medical Historical Library at historical.library@yale.edu.