Walle Jetze Harinx Nauta (June 8, 1916 – March 24, 1994) was a leading Dutch-American neuroanatomist, and one of the founders of the field of neuroscience.
[3] His father had traveled there from the Netherlands as a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church, but his focus quickly evolved into improving the overall education, health, and governance of the Indonesians.
[4] Growing up in a household that emphasized ideas of social justice and empathy toward others contributed to Nauta's character and actions as he grew into a young man in the midst of World War II.
[4] That same year, Nauta married Ellie Plaat, a nurse who was also from the Dutch East Indies and became a practicing physician.
Shortly after Nauta and Plaat married, they took in and harbored a fifteen year old Jewish girl named Dina Dasberg.
[6] He focused on the neural networks of the hypothalamus, a region in the brain that regulates certain metabolic processes among other activities of the autonomic nervous system.
[7] Walle Nauta began his career in research with his doctoral thesis studying the effects of lesions in the hypothalamus on sleep in rats.
[6] Papers he authored or contributed to included work on the distribution of the fornix, the connectivity of the amygdala and basal ganglia, and the spinothalamic tract.
[8] Nauta developed this stain through trial and error, using different combinations of oxidizing and reducing agents in the silver reduction phase.
Nauta was assisted in the development of the staining process by Lloyd F. Ryan, a U.S. Air Force major, and Paul A. Gygax, a doctoral student in organic chemistry.
[6][7] As the success of his stain began to gain popularity, the scientific community became increasingly optimistic about the neuroanatomical knowledge the technique could uncover.