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Sunday, February 22, 2015

Oliver Sacks



Sad to read that Oliver Sacks has terminal cancer. He writes about it at The New York Times ... My Own Life.

For those who aren't familiar with him, here's a bit about him from Wikipedia ...

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (born 9 July 1933) is an American-British neurologist, writer, and amateur chemist who is Professor of Neurology at New York University School of Medicine .... Sacks is the author of numerous best-selling books, including several collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His 1973 book Awakenings, an autobiographical account of his efforts to help victims of encephalitis lethargica regain proper neurological function, was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. He and his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain were the subject of "Musical Minds", an episode of the PBS series Nova.

And a couple of past articles about him ... Sacks appeal and The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks

I was first introduced to him in a college psych class through his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, and of course I've seen the movie Awakenings and also another film, At First Sight, based on Sack's book An Anthropologist on Mars. I identified with him ... he was shy like me and he liked Star Trek too :)

Here's a CBS news video about Sacks and his impending death ....


2 Comments:

Blogger Susan said...

He wrote a nice note to my daughter Gillian after she read one of his books and wrote to him. Their dialogue was about synesthesia, an interesting phenomenon she experienced in some ways. She was happy to receive his response.

8:54 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

He does seem very approachable. I write to him at his website once to ask a question and I did get a response, though not from him personally. Synesthesia ... that's where perceptions can bleed into each other, like hearing colors?

10:18 AM  

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