Oliver Sacks
Neurologist and writer
Oliver Sacks was a British neurologist and writer who wrote about patients with neurological conditions. His books include Awakenings, Musicophilia and the memoir On the Move.
2 summaries 57 min of listening
British Born 1933 in Willesden, United Kingdom Died 2015
About Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 and died in August 2015. He was a neurologist, naturalist, historian of science and writer. He received his medical degree from The Queen's College, Oxford, in 1958, then relocated to the US, where he built most of his career. He trained in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and later worked as a neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. There he treated survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness epidemic, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move independently for decades. His care of those patients inspired his 1973 book Awakenings, which was later made into a 1990 film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Sacks also wrote Musicophilia. His memoir On the Move came out not long before he died. In 2008 he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.