Sacks, Oliver (1933-2015), was an English-born neurologist and author. Neurology is the field of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the nervous system and muscles. Sacks was known for his best-selling books and popular articles, which explored the nature of the mind , consciousness , perception , and thought. His works describe unusual neurological effects in people who have conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease , autism , color blindness , epilepsy , Parkinson disease , schizophrenia , and Tourette syndrome .
Sacks first received wide acclaim for his book Awakenings (1973), which recounts his experience in a hospital in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, in 1966. Sacks observed many patients suffering from a movement disorder that left them aware but partly or completely immobile. Sacks gave them a drug called L-dopa in hopes of restoring movement. L-dopa had recently been demonstrated as a treatment for Parkinson disease. Amazingly, some patients almost instantly regained the ability to move and communicate. The effects proved temporary, however, and the patients eventually returned to their immobile state. The book was made into a popular motion picture in 1990. Sacks later wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (1985), which describes the odd effects of brain disorders on memory , perception, speech, and ability in a variety of patients.
Oliver Wolf Sacks was born on July 9, 1933, in London, England. His parents were both physicians. He studied medicine at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, graduating in 1958. In 1960, he moved to the United States, where he completed his medical training in San Francisco and Los Angeles, both in California. In 1965, he began work at the Albert Einstein College in New York City, where he eventually became a professor of neurology. He also worked as a professor at New York University and Columbia University in New York City. In addition, he worked as a consultant in neurological disorders in several New York City hospitals. Sacks died on Aug. 30, 2015.
His other books include Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf (1989), An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), The Island of the Colorblind (1996), Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007), The Mind’s Eye (2010), and Hallucinations (2012). A memoir of his early life, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, was published in 2001. A collection of previously unpublished essays, Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales, was published in 2019.
