Oliver Sacks (Author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales)

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Oliver Sacks

Born

in London, The United Kingdom

July 09, 1933

Died

August 30, 2015

Website

Genre

Science, Nonfiction, Musicology

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Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, was a British neurologist residing in the United States, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings, which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam, a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, O Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, was a British neurologist residing in the United States, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings, which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam, a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, he went on to earn in 1958, a Master of Arts (MA) and an MB ChB in chemistry, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.

After converting his British qualifications to American recognition (i.e., an MD as opposed to MB ChB), Sacks moved to New York, where he has lived since 1965, and taken twice weekly therapy sessions since 1966.

Sacks began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Service) in 1966. At Beth Abraham, Sacks worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. These patients and his treatment of them were the basis of Sacks' book Awakenings.

His work at Beth Abraham helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), where Sacks is currently an honorary medical advisor, is built. In 2000, IMNF honored Sacks, its founder, with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on Sacks in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind".

Sacks was formerly employed as a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine, serving the latter school for 42 years. On 1 July 2007, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed Sacks to a position as professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, at the same time opening to him a new position as "artist", which the university hoped will help interconnect disciplines such as medicine, law, and economics. Sacks was a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and maintained a practice in New York City.

Since 1996, Sacks was a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature). In 1999, Sacks became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in 1999, he became an Honorary Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford. In 2002, he became Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IV鈥擧umanities and Arts, Section 4鈥擫iterature).[38] and he was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. Sacks was awarded honorary doctorates from the College of Staten Island (1991), Tufts University (1991), New York Medical College (1991), Georgetown University (1992), Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992), Bard College (1992), Queen's University (Ontario) (2001), Gallaudet University (2005), University of Oxford (2005), Pontificia Universidad Cat贸lica del Per煤 (2006). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Asteroid 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003 and 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter, has been named in his honor. ...more

117 posts
Oliver Sacks's Blog

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Support Public Media Before It鈥檚 Gone

Do you remember where you first heard about Oliver Sacks? Chances are pretty good it was on public television or radio. Perhaps on Science Friday or Radiolab? Morning Edition? A Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross? For so many of us, life without NPR or PBS is impossible to imagine, but we cannot take it for granted.

Public media was important to Dr. Sacks on a personal level. He listened to his l

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Oliver Sacks鈥檚 books

Average rating: 4.05 · 522,171 ratings · 31,634 reviews · 117 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales 4.05 avg rating — 236,571 ratings — published 1985	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain 3.95 avg rating — 72,094 ratings — published 2007 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gratitude 4.18 avg rating — 23,142 ratings — published 2015 — 53 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hallucinations 3.93 avg rating — 24,598 ratings — published 2012 — 91 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales 4.15 avg rating — 23,112 ratings — published 1995 — 127 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On the Move: A Life 4.03 avg rating — 21,168 ratings — published 2015 — 73 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Awakenings 4.09 avg rating — 13,645 ratings — published 1973 — 124 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mind's Eye 3.92 avg rating — 13,425 ratings — published 2010 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Uncle Tungsten 3.99 avg rating — 6,872 ratings — published 2001 — 77 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The River of Consciousness 3.95 avg rating — 6,763 ratings — published 2017 — 52 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Oliver Sacks…

Series by Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks' memoirs (2 books)
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Oliver Sacks

4.02 avg rating — 28,038 ratings

Quotes by Oliver Sacks (?)

“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”
― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: La musique, le cerveau et nous

2117 likes

“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self鈥攈imself鈥攈e cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.”
― Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

457 likes

“My religion is nature. That鈥檚 what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.”
― Oliver Sacks

tags: naturalist

394 likes

See all Oliver Sacks's quotes »

Polls

Which one of these books did you gain the most "underground knowledge" from?

The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) by Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

6 votes 15.4%

Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization by Graham Hancock

4 votes 10.3%

The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World by David Icke

4 votes 10.3%

The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan by Robert Shea

2 votes 5.1%

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

2 votes 5.1%

Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent

2 votes 5.1%

1984 by George Orwell

2 votes 5.1%

Holy Bible: King James Version by ??

2 votes 5.1%

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

2 votes 5.1%

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

1 vote 2.6%

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

1 vote 2.6%

Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1) by Dan Brown

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

1 vote 2.6%

Classified Woman by Sibel Edmonds

1 vote 2.6%

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

1 vote 2.6%

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

1 vote 2.6%

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson

1 vote 2.6%

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

1 vote 2.6%

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

1 vote 2.6%

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

1 vote 2.6%

The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century by Robert Lomas

1 vote 2.6%

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6) by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

1 vote 2.6%

The Camel Club (Camel Club, #1) by David Baldacci

The Camel Club by David Baldacci

1 vote 2.6%

Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson

0 votes 0.0%

The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black

0 votes 0.0%

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot

0 votes 0.0%

Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century by James Bamford

0 votes 0.0%

The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon

0 votes 0.0%

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

0 votes 0.0%

The Untold History of The United States by Oliver Stone

0 votes 0.0%

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin

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The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3) by Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

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Catch-22 (Catch-22, #1) by Joseph Heller

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

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39 total votes

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Oliver Sacks鈥檚 Followers (9,443)

Add NewVideos

Oliver Sacks

117 postsOliver Sacks's Blog

Support Public Media Before It鈥檚 Gone

Combine EditionsOliver Sacks鈥檚 books

Series by Oliver Sacks

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

Add New
Videos

117 posts
Oliver Sacks's Blog

Combine Editions
Oliver Sacks鈥檚 books