Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks
CBE FRCP
Oliver Sacks CBE FRCP
	Sacks in 1985
Born	Oliver Wolf Sacks; 9 July 1933; London, England
Died	30 August 2015 (aged 82); New York City, U.S.
Education	University of Oxford (BA, BM BCh)
Known for	Non-fiction books about his psychiatric and neurological patients
Partner	Bill Hayes (2009–2015)
	Medical career
Profession	Physician, professor, author, neurologist
Institutions	New York University; Columbia University; Albert Einstein College of Medicine; University of Warwick; Little Sisters of the Poor
Sub-specialties	Neurology
Website	oliversacks.com
Signature

Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer.^[2]

Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).^[2] Later, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica epidemic, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings,^[3] which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated feature film, in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. His other best-selling books were mostly collections of case studies of people, including himself, with neurological disorders. He also published hundreds of articles (both peer-reviewed scientific articles and articles for a general audience), about neurological disorders, history of science, natural history, and nature. Journals and letters written by Sacks, but discovered after his death, indicate that some of his work was embellished or exaggerated.^[4]

The New York Times called him a "poet laureate of contemporary medicine", and "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century".^[5] Some of his books were adapted for plays by major playwrights, feature films, animated short films, opera, dance, fine art, and musical works in the classical genre.^[6] His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which describes the case histories of some of his patients, became the basis of an opera of the same name. The television series Brilliant Minds is based on his life.

Early life and education

Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in Cricklewood, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian Jewish^[7]^[8] doctor (died June 1990),^[9] and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England (died 1972),^[10] who was one of 18 siblings.^[11] She would sometimes bring home deformed fetuses from work, where she would dissect them with her son as a way for him to learn about human anatomy.^[12] Sacks had an extremely large extended family of eminent scientists, physicians and other notable people, including the director and writer Jonathan Lynn^[13] and first cousins the Israeli statesman Abba Eban^[14] and the Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann.^[15]^[a]

In December 1939, when Sacks was six years old, he and his older brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, and sent to a boarding school in the English Midlands where he remained until 1943.^[11] Unknown to his family, at the school, he and his brother Michael "subsisted on meager rations of turnips and beetroot and suffered cruel punishments at the hands of a sadistic headmaster."^[18] This is detailed in his first autobiography, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.^[19] Beginning with his return home at the age of 10, under his Uncle Dave's tutelage, he became an intensely focused amateur chemist. Later, he attended St Paul's School in London, where he developed lifelong friendships with Jonathan Miller and Eric Korn.^[20]

Study of medicine

During adolescence he shared an intense interest in biology with these friends, and later came to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine. He chose to study medicine at university and entered The Queen's College, Oxford in 1951.^[11] The first half studying medicine at Oxford is pre-clinical, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in physiology and biology in 1956.^[21]

Although not required, Sacks chose to stay on for an additional year to do research after he had taken a course by Hugh Macdonald Sinclair. Sacks recalls, "I had been seduced by a series of vivid lectures on the history of medicine and nutrition, given by Sinclair ... it was the history of physiology, the ideas and personalities of physiologists, which came to life."^[22] Sacks then became involved with the school's Laboratory of Human Nutrition under Sinclair. Sacks focused his research on the patent medicine Jamaica ginger, a toxic and commonly abused drug known to cause irreversible nerve damage. After devoting months to research he was disappointed by the lack of help and guidance he received from Sinclair. Sacks wrote up an account of his research findings but stopped working on the subject. As a result he became depressed: "I felt myself sinking into a state of quiet but in some ways agitated despair."^[22]

His tutor at Queen's and his parents, seeing his emotional state, suggested he extricate himself from academic studies for a period. His parents then suggested he spend the summer of 1955 living on Israeli kibbutz Ein HaShofet, where the physical labour would help him.^[23] Sacks later described his experience on the kibbutz as an "anodyne to the lonely, torturing months in Sinclair's lab". He said he lost 60 pounds (27 kg) from his previously overweight body as a result of the healthy, hard physical labour he performed there. He spent time travelling around the country with time spent scuba diving at the Red Sea port city of Eilat, and began to reconsider his future: "I wondered again, as I had wondered when I first went to Oxford, whether I really wanted to become a doctor. I had become very interested in neurophysiology, but I also loved marine biology; ... But I was 'cured' now; it was time to return to medicine, to start clinical work, seeing patients in London."^[22]

My pre-med studies in anatomy and physiology at Oxford had not prepared me in the least for real medicine. Seeing patients, listening to them, trying to enter (or at least imagine) their experiences and predicaments, feeling concerned for them, taking responsibility for them, was quite new to me ... It was not just a question of diagnosis and treatment; much graver questions could present themselves—questions about the quality of life and whether life was even worth living in some circumstances.

— Oliver Sacks^[22]

In 1956, Sacks began to study medicine at the University of Oxford and Middlesex Hospital Medical School.^[21] For the next two-and-a-half years, he took courses in surgery, orthopaedics, paediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, dermatology, infectious diseases, obstetrics and other disciplines. During his years as a student, he helped home-deliver a number of babies. In 1958, he graduated with Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BM BCh) degrees, and, as was usual at Oxford, his BA was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree.^[24]

After completing his medical degree, Sacks began his pre-registration house officer rotations at Middlesex Hospital the following month. "My eldest brother, Marcus, had trained at the Middlesex," he said, "and now I was following his footsteps."^[22] Before beginning his house officer post, he said he first wanted some hospital experience to gain more confidence, and took a job at a hospital in St Albans where his mother had worked as an emergency surgeon during the war.^{[citation needed]} He then did his first six-month post in Middlesex Hospital's medical unit, followed by another six months in its neurological unit.^[21]^[24] He completed his pre-registration year in June 1960, but was uncertain about his future.^[22]

Beginning life in North America

Sacks left Britain and flew to Montreal, Canada, on 9 July 1960, his 27th birthday. He visited the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), telling them that he wanted to be a pilot. After some interviews and checking his background, they told him he would be best in medical research. But as he kept making mistakes, including losing data from several months of research, destroying irreplaceable slides, and losing biological samples, his supervisors had second thoughts about him.^[25] Dr. Taylor, the head medical officer, told him, "You are clearly talented and we would love to have you, but I am not sure about your motives for joining." He was told to travel for a few months and reconsider. He used the next three months to travel across Canada and deep into the Canadian Rockies, which he described in his personal journal, later published as Canada: Pause, 1960.^[22]

In 1961 he arrived in the United States,^[26] completing an internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and a residency in neurology and neuropathology at UCLA.^[27] While in San Francisco, Sacks became a lifelong close friend of poet Thom Gunn, saying he loved his wild imagination, his strict control, and perfect poetic form.^[11] During much of his time at UCLA, he lived in a rented house in Topanga Canyon^[28] and experimented with various recreational drugs. He described some of his experiences in a 2012 New Yorker article,^[29] and in his book Hallucinations.^[30] During his early career in California and New York City he indulged in:

staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation, underwent a fierce regimen of bodybuilding at Muscle Beach (for a time he held a California record, after he performed a full squat with 600 pounds across his shoulders), and racked up more than 100,000 leather-clad miles on his motorcycle. And then one day he gave it all up—the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles, the bodybuilding.^[31]

He wrote that after moving to New York City, an amphetamine-facilitated epiphany that came as he read a book by the 19th-century migraine doctor Edward Liveing inspired him to chronicle his observations on neurological diseases and oddities; to become the "Liveing of our Time".^[29] Though he was a United States resident for the rest of his life, he never became a citizen.^[2] He told The Guardian in a 2005 interview, "In 1961, I declared my intention to become a United States citizen, which may have been a genuine intention, but I never got round to it. I think it may go with a slight feeling that this was only an extended visit. I rather like the words 'resident alien'. It's how I feel. I'm a sympathetic, resident, sort of visiting alien."^[32]

Career

Sacks served as an instructor and later professor of clinical neurology at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1966 to 2007, and also held an appointment at the New York University School of Medicine from 1992 to 2007. In July 2007 he joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center as a professor of neurology and psychiatry.^[27] At the same time he was appointed Columbia University's first "Columbia University Artist" at the university's Morningside Heights campus, recognising the role of his work in bridging the arts and sciences. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Warwick in the UK.^[33] He returned to New York University School of Medicine in 2012, serving as a professor of neurology and consulting neurologist in the school's epilepsy centre.^[34]

Sacks's work at Beth Abraham Hospital helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF) is built; Sacks was an honorary medical advisor.^[35] The Institute honoured Sacks in 2000 with its first Music Has Power Award.^[36] The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on him in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honour his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind."^[37]

Sacks maintained a busy hospital-based practice in New York City. He accepted a very limited number of private patients, in spite of being in great demand for such consultations. He served on the boards of The Neurosciences Institute and the New York Botanical Garden.^[38]

Writing

In 1967 Sacks first began to write of his experiences with some of his neurological patients. He burned his first such book, Ward 23, during an episode of self-doubt.^[39] His books have been translated into over 25 languages. In addition, Sacks was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, London Review of Books and numerous other medical, scientific and general publications.^[40]^[41]^[42] He was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science in 2001.^[43]

Sacks's work is featured in a "broader range of media than those of any other contemporary medical author"^[44] and in 1990, The New York Times wrote he "has become a kind of poet laureate of contemporary medicine".^[45]

Sacks considered his literary style to have grown out of the tradition of 19th-century "clinical anecdotes", a literary style that included detailed narrative case histories, which he termed novelistic. He also counted among his inspirations the case histories of the Russian neuropsychologist A. R. Luria, who became a close friend through correspondence from 1973 until Luria's death in 1977.^[46]^[47] After the publication of his first book Migraine in 1970, a review by his close friend W. H. Auden encouraged Sacks to adapt his writing style to "be metaphorical, be mythical, be whatever you need."^[48]

Sacks described his cases with a wealth of narrative detail, concentrating on the experiences of the patient (in the case of his A Leg to Stand On, the patient was himself). The patients he described were often able to adapt to their situation in different ways although their neurological conditions were usually considered incurable.^[49] His book Awakenings, upon which the 1990 feature film of the same name is based, describes his experiences using the new drug levodopa on post-encephalitic patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital, later Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, in New York.^[3] Awakenings was also the subject of the first documentary, made in 1974, for the British television series Discovery. Composer and friend of Sacks Tobias Picker composed a ballet inspired by Awakenings for the Rambert Dance Company, which was premiered by Rambert in Salford, UK in 2010;^[50] In 2022, Picker premiered an opera of Awakenings^[51] at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.^[52]^[53]^[54]^[55]^[56]

In his memoir A Leg to Stand On he wrote about the consequences of a near-fatal accident he had at age 41 in 1974, a year after the publication of Awakenings, when he fell off a cliff and severely injured his left leg while mountaineering alone above Hardangerfjord, Norway.^[57]^[58]

In some of his other books, he describes cases of Tourette syndrome and various effects of Parkinson's disease. The title article of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat describes a man with visual agnosia^[59] and was the subject of a 1986 opera by Michael Nyman. The book was edited by Kate Edgar, who formed a long-lasting partnership with Sacks, with Sacks later calling her a "mother figure" and saying that he did his best work when she was with him, including Seeing Voices, Uncle Tungsten, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations.^[60]

The title article of his book An Anthropologist on Mars, which won a Polk Award for magazine reporting, is about Temple Grandin, an autistic professor. He writes in the book's preface that neurological conditions such as autism "can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence". Sacks's 1989 book Seeing Voices covers a variety of topics in deaf studies. The romantic drama film At First Sight (1999) was based on the essay "To See and Not See" in An Anthropologist on Mars. Sacks also has a small role in the film as a reporter.

In his book The Island of the Colorblind Sacks wrote about an island where many people have achromatopsia (total colourblindness, very low visual acuity and high photophobia). The second section of this book, titled Cycad Island, describes the Chamorro people of Guam, who have a high incidence of a neurodegenerative disease locally known as lytico-bodig disease (a devastating combination of ALS, dementia and parkinsonism). Later, along with Paul Alan Cox, Sacks published papers suggesting a possible environmental cause for the disease, namely the toxin beta-methylamino L-alanine (BMAA) from the cycad nut accumulating by biomagnification in the flying fox bat.^[61]^[62]

In November 2012 Sacks's book Hallucinations was published. In it he examined why ordinary people can sometimes experience hallucinations and challenged the stigma associated with the word. He explained: "Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury."^[63] He also considers the less well known Charles Bonnet syndrome, sometimes found in people who have lost their eyesight. The book was described by Entertainment Weekly as: "Elegant... An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind."^[64]

He also wrote The Mind's Eye, Oaxaca Journal and On the Move: A Life (his second autobiography).

Before his death in 2015 Sacks founded the Oliver Sacks Foundation, a non-profit organization established to increase understanding of the brain through using narrative non-fiction and case histories, with goals that include publishing some of Sacks's unpublished writings, and making his vast amount of unpublished writings available for scholarly study.^[65] The first posthumous book of Sacks's writings, River of Consciousness, an anthology of his essays, was published in October 2017. Most of the essays had been previously published in various periodicals or in science-essay-anthology books, but were no longer readily obtainable. Sacks specified the order of his essays in River of Consciousness prior to his death. Some of the essays focus on repressed memories and other tricks the mind plays on itself.^[66] This was followed by a collection of some of his letters.^[67] Sacks was a prolific handwritten-letter correspondent, and never communicated by e-mail.

Criticism and falsifications

Sacks sometimes faced criticism in the medical and disability studies communities. Arthur K. Shapiro, for instance, an expert on Tourette syndrome, said Sacks's work was "idiosyncratic" and relied too much on anecdotal evidence in his writings.^[68]^{[full citation needed]} Researcher Makoto Yamaguchi thought Sacks's mathematical explanations, in his study of the numerically gifted savant twins (in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), were irrelevant, and questioned Sacks's methods.^[69] Although Sacks has been characterised as a "compassionate" writer and doctor,^[70]^[71]^[72] others have felt that he exploited his subjects.^[73]^[74] Sacks was called "the man who mistook his patients for a literary career" by British academic and disability rights activist Tom Shakespeare,^[75] and one critic called his work "a high-brow freak show".^[73] Sacks responded, "I would hope that a reading of what I write shows respect and appreciation, not any wish to expose or exhibit for the thrill ... but it's a delicate business."^[76]

Sacks's private journals and letters were made available to journalist Rachel Aviv by the Oliver Sacks Foundation. She found that Sacks described aspects of his books as "pure fabrications" and "falsifications", and that he considered his case studies as self-expression or "a sort of autobiography". In a private letter to his brother he described The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat as a book of "fairy tales" and wrote: "Guilt has been much greater since 'Hat' because of (among other things) My lies, falsification". Pria Anand compared Sacks's "confabulations" to the temptation of medical professionals to construct life stories, explaining that his moral failures were no less upsetting for being familiar.^[77] H. Steven Moffic described Sacks as an author of "historical fiction".^[78]

The wife of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" disagreed with how her husband had been presented.^[4]

Honours

In 1996, Sacks became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature).^[79] He was named a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1999.^[80] Also in 1999, he became an Honorary Fellow at the Queen's College, Oxford.^[81]

In 2000, Sacks received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.^[82] In 2002, he became Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IV—Humanities and Arts, Section 4—Literature)^[83] and he was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University.^[84] Sacks was also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP).^[85]

Sacks was awarded honorary doctorates from Georgetown University (1990),^[86] College of Staten Island (1991),^[24] Tufts University (1991),^[87] New York Medical College (1991),^[24] Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992),^[24] Bard College (1992),^[88] Queen's University at Kingston (2001),^[89] Gallaudet University (2005),^[90] Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2006)^[91] and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2008).

Oxford University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005.^[92]

Sacks received the position "Columbia Artist" from Columbia University in 2007, a post that was created specifically for him and that gave him unconstrained access to the university, regardless of department or discipline.^[93]

On 26 November 2008, Sacks was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for services to medicine, in the Queen's Birthday Honours.^[94]^[95]

The minor planet 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003, was named in his honour.^[96]

In February 2010, Sacks was named as one of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers. He described himself as "an old Jewish atheist", a phrase borrowed from his friend Jonathan Miller.^[97]

Personal life

Sacks never married and lived alone for most of his life.^[76] He declined to share personal details until late in his life. He addressed his homosexuality for the first time in his 2015 autobiography On the Move: A Life.^[22] Celibate for about 35 years since his forties, in 2008 he began a friendship with writer and New York Times contributor Bill Hayes. Their friendship slowly evolved into a committed long-term partnership that lasted until Sacks's death; Hayes wrote about it in the 2017 memoir Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me.^[98]

In Lawrence Weschler's biography, And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?, Sacks is described by a colleague as "deeply eccentric". A friend from his days as a medical resident mentions Sacks's need to violate taboos, like drinking blood mixed with milk, and how he frequently took drugs like LSD and speed in the early 1960s. Sacks himself shared personal information about how he got his first orgasm spontaneously while floating in a swimming pool, and later when he was giving a man a massage. He also admits having "erotic fantasies of all sorts" in a natural history museum he visited often in his youth, many of them about animals, like hippos in the mud.^[99] In the late 1960s he attempted to "sublimate" his closeted energies into his work; he would quell nighttime erections by submersion in orange jello, and his writing was prolific, with over a million words a year.^[4]

Sacks noted in a 2001 interview that severe shyness, which he described as "a disease", had been a lifelong impediment to his personal interactions.^[44] He believed his shyness stemmed from his prosopagnosia, popularly known as "face blindness",^[100] a condition that he studied in some of his patients, including the titular man from his work The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. This neurological disability of his, whose severity and whose impact on his life Sacks did not fully grasp until he reached middle age, even sometimes prevented him from recognising his own reflection in mirrors.^[101]

Sacks swam almost daily for most of his life, beginning when his swimming-champion father started him swimming as an infant. He became well-known for open water swimming when he lived in the City Island section of the Bronx, as he routinely swam around the island or swam vast distances away from the island and back.^[2]

He was also an avid powerlifter.^[102]^[103]^[104]

Sacks was a cousin of the Nobel Memorial Economics laureate Robert Aumann.^[105]

Illness

Sacks underwent radiation therapy in 2006 for a uveal melanoma in his right eye. He discussed his loss of stereoscopic vision caused by the treatment, which eventually resulted in right-eye blindness, in an article^[106] and later in his book The Mind's Eye.^[107]

In January 2015, metastases from the ocular tumour were discovered in his liver.^[108] Sacks announced this development in a February 2015 New York Times op-ed piece and estimated his remaining time in "months". He expressed his intent to "live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can". He added: "I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight."^[108]

Death and legacy

Sacks died from cancer on 30 August 2015, at his home in Manhattan at the age of 82, surrounded by his closest friends.^[2]

In his obituary in The New York Times he was described as "a man of contradictions: candid and guarded, gregarious and solitary, clinical and compassionate, scientific and poetic, British and almost American. 'In 1961, I declared my intention to become a United States citizen, which may have been a genuine intention, but I never got round to it,' he told The Guardian in 2005."^[2]

The 2019 documentary Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, by Ric Burns, called Sacks "the most famous neurologist" and noted that during his lifetime neurology resident applicants often said that they had chosen neurology after reading Sacks's works.^[109] The film includes documents from Sacks's archive.^[110]

In 2019, Alfred A. Knopf signed a contract with the historian and biographer Laura J. Snyder to write a biography of Sacks based on exclusive access to his archive.^[111]

In 2024, the New York Public Library announced that it had acquired Sacks's archive, including 35,000 letters, 7,000 photographs, manuscripts of his books, and journals and notebooks.^[110]^[112] In 2024, Alfred A. Knopf published a collection of his letters, edited by Kate Edgar.^[113]^[114]

Published works

Migraine (1970) ISBN 978-0-375-70406-2
Awakenings (1973) ISBN 0-375-70405-1
A Leg to Stand On (1984) ISBN 978-0-684-85395-6
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) ISBN 0-671-55471-9
Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf (1989)^[115] ISBN 0-520-06083-0
An Anthropologist on Mars (1995) ISBN 0-679-43785-1
The Island of the Colorblind (1997) ISBN 978-0-676-97035-7
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001) (first autobiography) ISBN 0-375-40448-1
Oaxaca Journal (2002) ISBN 978-0-307-94744-4 (travelogue of Sacks's ten-day trip with the American Fern Society to Oaxaca, Mexico, 2000)^[116]
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) ISBN 978-1-4000-4081-0
The Mind's Eye (2010) ISBN 978-0-307-27208-9
Hallucinations (2012) ISBN 978-0-307-95724-5
On the Move: A Life (2015) (second autobiography) ISBN 978-0-385-35254-3
Gratitude (2015) (published posthumously) ISBN 978-0451492937
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman (2015) ISBN 978-1-583-33467-6 (foreword by Sacks)
Oliver Sacks: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2016) ISBN 978-1612195773 (a collection of interviews)
The River of Consciousness (2017) ISBN 978-0-345-80899-8
Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales (2019) ISBN 978-0451492890
Letters (2024) ISBN 978-0451492913

Articles

"The Machine Stops: the neurologist on steam engines, smart phones, and fearing the future". Personal History. The New Yorker. 94 (48): 28–29. 11 February 2019.
"Telling : the intimate decisions of dementia care". A Neurologist's Notebook. The New Yorker. 95 (2): 26–27. 4 March 2019.^[117]

Notes

Although it has been said that Sacks was a cousin of the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Jonathan Sacks, Baron Sacks, the two were not related.^[16] This confusion may be due to an obituary written by Oliver Sacks's nephew Jonathan Sacks.^[17]

References

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"Columbia University website, section of Psychiatry". Asp.cumc.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
"Oliver Sacks: Tripping in Topanga, 1963 – The Los Angeles Review of Books". Lareviewofbooks.org. 12 December 2012. Archived from the original on 7 July 2015. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
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Sacks, O. Hallucinations. Knopf (2012). ISBN 0307957241
Weschler, Lawrence (28 April 2015). "Oliver Sacks, Before the Neurologist's Cancer and New York Times Op-Ed". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 19 August 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
Brown, Andrew (4 March 2005). "Seeing double". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 December 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
"NYU Langone Medical Center Welcomes Neurologist and Author Oliver Sacks, MD" Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Newswise.com. 13 September 2012.
"Oliver Sacks, MD, FRCP". FACES (Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures). Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 14 September 2015.
"About the Institute". Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
"Henry Z. Steinway honored with 'Music Has Power' award: Beth Abraham Hospital honors piano maker for a lifetime of 'affirming the value of music'". Music Trades Magazine. 1 January 2006. Retrieved 9 August 2008.^{[dead link]}
"2006 Music Has Power Awards featuring performance by Rob Thomas, honouring acclaimed neurologist & author Dr. Oliver Sacks" (Press release). Beth Abraham Family of Health Services. 13 October 2006. Archived from the original on 8 February 2009. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
Sacks, O. Oliver Sacks Curriculum Vitae. Retrieved 7 January 2017 from http://www.oliversacks.com/os/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Oliver-Sacks-cv-2014.pdf Archived 2 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine
Silberman, Steve (2015). NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. Penguin. ISBN 978-1583334676.
"Archive: Search: The New Yorker—Oliver Sacks". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
"Oliver Sacks—The New York Review of Books". Archived from the original on 7 July 2010. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
"Oliver Sacks. Publications & Periodicals". oliversacks.com. Archived from the original on 10 June 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
"Lewis Thomas Prize". The Rockefeller University. 18 March 2002. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 9 August 2008.
Silberman, Steve. "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks". Wired. Archived from the original on 18 February 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Broyard, Anatole (1 April 1990). "Good books abut (sic) being sick". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 February 2009. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
"The Inner Life of the Broken Brain: Narrative and Neurology". Radio National. All in the Mind. 2 April 2005. Archived from the original on 22 February 2008. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Sacks, O. (2014). Luria and "Romantic Science". In A. Yasnitsky, R. Van der Veer & M. Ferrari (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of cultural-historical psychology (517–528). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Wallace-Wells, David (3 November 2012). "A Brain With a Heart". New York. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
Sacks, Oliver (1996) [1995]. "Preface". An Anthropologist on Mars (New ed.). London: Picador. xiii–xviii. ISBN 0-330-34347-5. The sense of the brain's remarkable plasticity, its capacity for the most striking adaptations, not least in the special (and often desperate) circumstances of neural or sensory mishap, has come to dominate my own perception of my patients and their lives.
"Rambert Dance Company: The Making of Awakenings". The Ballet Bag. Archived from the original on 18 May 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
MacCarthy, Fiona (5 December 1985). "Travels round a couch". The Times.
Fenske, Sarah. "Awakenings Opera Premiering In St. Louis Came From Couple's Mutual Inspiration". St. Louis Public Radio. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
Cohn, Fred. "Re-Awakenings". Opera News. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
Barone, Joshua (25 May 2022). "An Oliver Sacks Book Becomes an Opera, With Help From Friends". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
Brook, Tom. "Awakenings opera opens three decades after Hollywood movie". BBC. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
Waleson, Heidi. "'Awakenings', 'Harvey Milk' and 'Carmen' Review: Two Poignant Premieres and an Old Favorite". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.
Sacks, Oliver (28 June 1984). "The Bull on the Mountain". The New York Review. The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 15 November 2020. Retrieved 29 October 2024.
Sacks, Oliver (6 July 2013). "The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)". The New York Times.
Video: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1987). The Open Mind. 1987. Retrieved 21 February 2012.
Francis, Gavin (27 October 2024). "Letters by Oliver Sacks review – valuable insight into a curious mind". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 5 November 2024.
Murch, S. J.; Cox, P. A.; Banack, S. A.; Steele, J. C.; Sacks, O. W. (October 2004). "Occurrence of beta-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA) in ALS/PDC patients from Guam". Acta Neurol. Scand. 110 (4): 267–9. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0404.2004.00320.x. PMID 15355492. S2CID 32474959.
Cox, P. A.; Sacks, O. W. (March 2002). "Cycad neurotoxins, consumption of flying foxes, and ALS-PDC disease in Guam". Neurology. 58 (6): 956–9. doi:10.1212/wnl.58.6.956. PMID 11914415.(registration required)
"Hallucinations". Oliversacks.com. Archived from the original on 8 October 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
Lee, Stephan. "Book Review: Hallucinations". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 23 March 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2012.
A Life Well Lived Archived 22 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine 30 August 2015
"Book Review: Oliver Sacks' The River of Consciousness is a look inside a beautiful and enquiring mind". Arts on the AU. 7 January 2018. Archived from the original on 20 January 2018. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
Francis, Gavin (27 October 2024). "Letters by Oliver Sacks review – valuable insight into a curious mind". The Observer.
Kushner (2000), p. 204
Yamaguchi, Makoto. "Savant syndrome and prime numbers". Polish Psychological Bulletin. pp. 69–73. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
Weinraub, Judith (13 January 1991). "Oliver Sacks: Hero of the Hopeless; The Doctor of 'Awakenings,' With Compassion for the Chronically Ill". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
Bianculli, David (25 August 1998). "Healthy Dose of Compassion in Medical 'Mind' Series". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
Kakutani, Michiko (14 February 1995). "Finding the Advantages in Some Mind Disorders". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2008.
Couser, G. Thomas (December 2001). "The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology" (PDF). The Poynter Center, Indiana University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Verlager, Alicia (August 2006). Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media (Thesis). MIT. hdl:1721.1/39143.
Shakespeare, Tom (1996). "Book Review: An Anthropologist on Mars". Disability and Society. 11 (1): 137–142. doi:10.1080/09687599650023380.
Burkeman, Oliver (10 May 2002). "Sacks appeal". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 September 2020. Retrieved 18 August 2008.
Anand, Pria (20 January 2026). "The Confabulations of Oliver Sacks". Nautilus.
Moffic, H. Steven (27 January 2026). "In Memoriam, Epilogue: The Psychiatrist Who Mistook Oliver Sacks for a Psychiatrist Confesses". Psychiatric Times.
"Current Members". The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2008.
"New York Academy of Sciences Announces 1999 Fellows". New York Academy of Sciences. 6 October 1999. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009. Retrieved 15 August 2008.
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"Class of 2002 – Fellows". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2002. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 15 August 2008.
"Oliver Sacks, Awakenings Author, Receives Rockefeller University's Lewis Thomas Prize". Rockefeller University. 2002. Archived from the original on 8 February 2009. Retrieved 15 August 2008.
Curriculum Vitae Archived 2 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine – website of Oliver Sacks
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"Tufts University Factbook 2006–2007 (abridged)" (PDF (4.7 MB)). Tufts University. p. 127. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2008.
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"2005 honorary degrees announced". University of Oxford. 14 February 2005. Archived from the original on 15 May 2007.
Oliver Sacks @ Columbia University Archived 10 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine Arts Initiative @ Columbia University. 2009. Retrieved 10 October 2011
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Bergner, Daniel (20 August 2019). "A Biography of Oliver Sacks, Written by His Boswell". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 July 2020. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
Katz, Neil (26 August 2010). "Prosopagnosia: Oliver Sacks' Battle with "Face Blindness"". CBS News. Archived from the original on 25 December 2013. Retrieved 3 February 2010.
Sacks, Oliver (30 August 2010). "Face-Blind Why are some of us terrible at recognizing faces?". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2021. My problem with recognizing faces extends not only to my nearest and dearest but also to myself. Thus, on several occasions I have apologized for almost bumping into a large bearded man, only to realize that the large bearded man was myself in a mirror.
"Dr. Oliver Sacks: Mind Over Muscle". 27 October 2015.
"On Oliver Sacks' Obsession With Weightlifting". 18 April 2019.
"On The Move: A Life". Oliver Sacks | Official Website of Author, Neurologist & Foundation.
"'He saw beyond the illnesses into the souls of his patients'". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 31 August 2015. Archived from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
Murphy, John (9 December 2010). "Eye to Eye with Dr. Oliver Sacks". Review of Optometry. Archived from the original on 30 December 2010. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
Sacks, O. The Mind's Eye. Knopf (2010). ISBN 0307272087.
Sacks, Oliver (19 February 2015). "My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 February 2015. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
Wijdicks, Eelco F. M. (2022). "3. The neurologist in film". Neurocinema—The Sequel: A History of Neurology on Screen. CRC Press. pp. 55–58. ISBN 978-1-000-54916-4.
Schuessler, Jennifer (4 October 2024). "Oliver Sacks Archive Heads to the New York Public Library". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
"Contribute to an Oliver Sacks Biography!". www.oliversacks.com. 9 July 2019.
"The New York Public Library Acquires Archive of Oliver Sacks". City Life Org. 4 October 2024. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
"Letters by Oliver Sacks". Retrieved 11 December 2025.
Review by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 4 November 2024.
Sacks, Oliver (January 1989). Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf – Oliver W. Sacks. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520060838. Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
Sacks, Oliver (March 2002). Oaxaca Journal. National Geographic. ISBN 0792265211.
Online version is titled "How Much a Dementia Patient Needs to Know" and is dated 25 February 2019.

External links

Library resources about
Oliver Sacks

Official website
Oliver Sacks's channel on YouTube
"Oliver Sacks interviewed on Web of Stories". Web of Stories.
Oliver Sacks Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement
The Oliver Sacks Foundation Archived 25 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine

Multimedia

Oliver Sacks at IMDb
Oliver Sacks at TED
Oliver Sacks on Charlie Rose
Appearances on C-SPAN
"Appearances". Science Friday. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015.
"Appearances". Radiolab.
"Appearances". NPR. 25 June 2025.
Wells, Katherine; Lichtman, Flora (2 December 2010). "Oliver Sacks" (video). Science Friday. Desktop Diaries. National Public Radio. Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks explains what his desk means to him
Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Simon, Joanna (1989). "Watch this Oliver Sacks interview" (video). MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. PBS (published 1 September 2015).
Interview with Dempsey Rice, documentary filmmaker, about Oliver Sacks film
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life (2019) at IMDb, a documentary film by Ric Burns

Publications

Oliver Sacks collected news and commentary at The New York Times
"Oliver Sacks articles". The New York Review of Books.

[18] Although it has been said that Sacks was a cousin of the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Jonathan Sacks, Baron Sacks, the two were not related.^[16] This confusion may be due to an obituary written by Oliver Sacks's nephew Jonathan Sacks.^[17]

[1] "OLIVER SACKS, MD, FRCP, CBE" (PDF). oliversacks.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 19 January 2023.

[OLSacks.NYTobit-2] Cowles, Gregory (30 August 2015). "Oliver Sacks, Neurologist Who Wrote About the Brain's Quirks, Dies at 82". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021.

[About-3] "Biography. Oliver Sacks, MD, FRCP". oliversacks.com. Official website. Archived from the original on 2 June 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2008.

[auto-4] Aviv, Rachel. "Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 December 2025.

[5] "In the Region of Lost Minds". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 18 September 2015.

[CBE-6] "Oliver Sacks dies in New York aged 82". BBC News. Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[7] "Meals and Memories". The New Yorker. 7 September 2015. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2015.

[8] "Profile: Oliver Sacks". The Guardian. 5 March 2005. Archived from the original on 10 September 2015. Retrieved 22 September 2015.

[9] An Anthropologist on Mars (Knopf, 1995), p. 70

[10] May, Alex (2019). "Sacks, Oliver Wolf (1933–2015), neurologist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.110718. Retrieved 11 October 2019. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)

[GuardianProfile-11] Brown, Andrew (5 March 2005). "Oliver Sacks Profile: Seeing double". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 December 2013. Retrieved 10 August 2008.

[12] Anthony, Andrew (16 October 2010). "Oliver Sacks: The visionary who can't recognise faces". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 December 2025.

[13] "Herzog family tree". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 1 September 2015.

[14] "Oliver Sacks – Scientist – Abba Eban, my extraordinary cousin". Web of Stories. 2 October 2012. Archived from the original on 19 September 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[sabbath-15] "Oliver Sacks: Sabbath". The New York Times. 16 August 2015. Archived from the original on 21 August 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[16] "Times apologises for saying Oliver Sacks was related to chief rabbi in obituary". Left Foot Forward. 2 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2 January 2023.

[17] Sacks, Jonathan (27 December 2015). "Oliver Sacks Remembered by his Nephew". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2022.

[:0-19] Nadine Epstein, (2008), Uncle Xenon: The Element of Oliver Sacks Archived 4 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine Moment Magazine

[uncle_tungsten-20] Sacks, Oliver (2001). Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-375-40448-1.

[21] "Eric Korn: Polymath whose work took in poetry, literary criticism, antiquarian bookselling and the 'Round Britain Quiz'". The Independent. 19 December 2014. Archived from the original on 22 June 2019. Retrieved 22 June 2019.

[WWW-22] "Sacks, Oliver Wolf, (9 July 1933–30 Aug. 2015), neurologist and writer; Professor of Neurology, and Consulting Neurologist, Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, New York University, since 2012". Who Was Who. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2016. Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 25 June 2022.

[Move-23] Sacks, O. On the Move: A Life. Knopf (2015). ISBN 0385352549

[24] Brent, Frances (1 September 2015). "Book Review// On the Move". Moment. Archived from the original on 22 February 2016. Retrieved 9 February 2016.

[CV-25] "Oliver Sacks, MD, FRCP". Official site. Archived from the original on 13 July 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2008.

[26] "Oliver Sacks chronicles the hilarious errors of his professional life and the fumbles in his private life". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 18 July 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2020.

[Rowland2016-27] Rowland, Lewis P. (1 February 2016). "In Memoriam: Oliver Sacks, MD (July 9, 1933, to August 30, 2015)". JAMA Neurology. 73 (2): 246–247. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2015.3887. ISSN 2168-6149. PMID 26857603.

[Columbia-28] "Columbia University website, section of Psychiatry". Asp.cumc.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 29 December 2013.

[29] "Oliver Sacks: Tripping in Topanga, 1963 – The Los Angeles Review of Books". Lareviewofbooks.org. 12 December 2012. Archived from the original on 7 July 2015. Retrieved 4 May 2015.

[drugs-30] Sacks, Oliver (27 August 2012). "Altered States". The New Yorker. p. 40. Archived from the original on 26 November 2012. Retrieved 14 December 2012.

[31] Sacks, O. Hallucinations. Knopf (2012). ISBN 0307957241

[32] Weschler, Lawrence (28 April 2015). "Oliver Sacks, Before the Neurologist's Cancer and New York Times Op-Ed". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 19 August 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[33] Brown, Andrew (4 March 2005). "Seeing double". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 December 2013. Retrieved 31 May 2021.

[NYU_Langone_Medical_Center-34] "NYU Langone Medical Center Welcomes Neurologist and Author Oliver Sacks, MD" Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Newswise.com. 13 September 2012.

[35] "Oliver Sacks, MD, FRCP". FACES (Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures). Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 14 September 2015.

[36] "About the Institute". Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. Archived from the original on 14 May 2008. Retrieved 9 August 2008.

[37] "Henry Z. Steinway honored with 'Music Has Power' award: Beth Abraham Hospital honors piano maker for a lifetime of 'affirming the value of music'". Music Trades Magazine. 1 January 2006. Retrieved 9 August 2008.^{[dead link]}

[38] "2006 Music Has Power Awards featuring performance by Rob Thomas, honouring acclaimed neurologist & author Dr. Oliver Sacks" (Press release). Beth Abraham Family of Health Services. 13 October 2006. Archived from the original on 8 February 2009. Retrieved 9 August 2008.

[39] Sacks, O. Oliver Sacks Curriculum Vitae. Retrieved 7 January 2017 from http://www.oliversacks.com/os/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Oliver-Sacks-cv-2014.pdf Archived 2 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine

[40] Silberman, Steve (2015). NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. Penguin. ISBN 978-1583334676.

[sacks_newyorker_search-41] "Archive: Search: The New Yorker—Oliver Sacks". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 13 August 2008.

[sacks_newyorkreview_contribs-42] "Oliver Sacks—The New York Review of Books". Archived from the original on 7 July 2010. Retrieved 13 August 2008.

[sacks_periodicals-43] "Oliver Sacks. Publications & Periodicals". oliversacks.com. Archived from the original on 10 June 2008. Retrieved 13 August 2008.

[44] "Lewis Thomas Prize". The Rockefeller University. 18 March 2002. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 9 August 2008.

[Wired-45] Silberman, Steve. "The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks". Wired. Archived from the original on 18 February 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2008.

[46] Broyard, Anatole (1 April 1990). "Good books abut (sic) being sick". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 February 2009. Retrieved 10 August 2008.

[TranscriptRadioShow-47] "The Inner Life of the Broken Brain: Narrative and Neurology". Radio National. All in the Mind. 2 April 2005. Archived from the original on 22 February 2008. Retrieved 10 August 2008.

[cambridgeHandbook-48] Sacks, O. (2014). Luria and "Romantic Science". In A. Yasnitsky, R. Van der Veer & M. Ferrari (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of cultural-historical psychology (517–528). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

[49] Wallace-Wells, David (3 November 2012). "A Brain With a Heart". New York. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[50] Sacks, Oliver (1996) [1995]. "Preface". An Anthropologist on Mars (New ed.). London: Picador. xiii–xviii. ISBN 0-330-34347-5. The sense of the brain's remarkable plasticity, its capacity for the most striking adaptations, not least in the special (and often desperate) circumstances of neural or sensory mishap, has come to dominate my own perception of my patients and their lives.

[51] "Rambert Dance Company: The Making of Awakenings". The Ballet Bag. Archived from the original on 18 May 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2016.

[52] MacCarthy, Fiona (5 December 1985). "Travels round a couch". The Times.

[53] Fenske, Sarah. "Awakenings Opera Premiering In St. Louis Came From Couple's Mutual Inspiration". St. Louis Public Radio. Archived from the original on 30 October 2020. Retrieved 1 May 2022.

[54] Cohn, Fred. "Re-Awakenings". Opera News. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.

[55] Barone, Joshua (25 May 2022). "An Oliver Sacks Book Becomes an Opera, With Help From Friends". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.

[56] Brook, Tom. "Awakenings opera opens three decades after Hollywood movie". BBC. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.

[57] Waleson, Heidi. "'Awakenings', 'Harvey Milk' and 'Carmen' Review: Two Poignant Premieres and an Old Favorite". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2022.

[58] Sacks, Oliver (28 June 1984). "The Bull on the Mountain". The New York Review. The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 15 November 2020. Retrieved 29 October 2024.

[OS_NYTimes-59] Sacks, Oliver (6 July 2013). "The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)". The New York Times.

[60] Video: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1987). The Open Mind. 1987. Retrieved 21 February 2012.

[61] Francis, Gavin (27 October 2024). "Letters by Oliver Sacks review – valuable insight into a curious mind". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 5 November 2024.

[Ncbi1-62] Murch, S. J.; Cox, P. A.; Banack, S. A.; Steele, J. C.; Sacks, O. W. (October 2004). "Occurrence of beta-methylamino-l-alanine (BMAA) in ALS/PDC patients from Guam". Acta Neurol. Scand. 110 (4): 267–9. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0404.2004.00320.x. PMID 15355492. S2CID 32474959.

[Ncbi2-63] Cox, P. A.; Sacks, O. W. (March 2002). "Cycad neurotoxins, consumption of flying foxes, and ALS-PDC disease in Guam". Neurology. 58 (6): 956–9. doi:10.1212/wnl.58.6.956. PMID 11914415.(registration required)

[64] "Hallucinations". Oliversacks.com. Archived from the original on 8 October 2014. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[65] Lee, Stephan. "Book Review: Hallucinations". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 23 March 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2012.

[66] A Life Well Lived Archived 22 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine 30 August 2015

[67] "Book Review: Oliver Sacks' The River of Consciousness is a look inside a beautiful and enquiring mind". Arts on the AU. 7 January 2018. Archived from the original on 20 January 2018. Retrieved 19 January 2018.

[68] Francis, Gavin (27 October 2024). "Letters by Oliver Sacks review – valuable insight into a curious mind". The Observer.

[69] Kushner (2000), p. 204

[70] Yamaguchi, Makoto. "Savant syndrome and prime numbers". Polish Psychological Bulletin. pp. 69–73. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 22 May 2021.

[weinraub-71] Weinraub, Judith (13 January 1991). "Oliver Sacks: Hero of the Hopeless; The Doctor of 'Awakenings,' With Compassion for the Chronically Ill". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 12 August 2008.

[bianculli-72] Bianculli, David (25 August 1998). "Healthy Dose of Compassion in Medical 'Mind' Series". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on 10 February 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2008.

[kakutani_1995-73] Kakutani, Michiko (14 February 1995). "Finding the Advantages in Some Mind Disorders". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 12 August 2008.

[Couser-74] Couser, G. Thomas (December 2001). "The Cases of Oliver Sacks: The Ethics of Neuroanthropology" (PDF). The Poynter Center, Indiana University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2008.

[75] Verlager, Alicia (August 2006). Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media (Thesis). MIT. hdl:1721.1/39143.

[76] Shakespeare, Tom (1996). "Book Review: An Anthropologist on Mars". Disability and Society. 11 (1): 137–142. doi:10.1080/09687599650023380.

[Burkeman-77] Burkeman, Oliver (10 May 2002). "Sacks appeal". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 September 2020. Retrieved 18 August 2008.

[78] Anand, Pria (20 January 2026). "The Confabulations of Oliver Sacks". Nautilus.

[79] Moffic, H. Steven (27 January 2026). "In Memoriam, Epilogue: The Psychiatrist Who Mistook Oliver Sacks for a Psychiatrist Confesses". Psychiatric Times.

[80] "Current Members". The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[81] "New York Academy of Sciences Announces 1999 Fellows". New York Academy of Sciences. 6 October 1999. Archived from the original on 11 February 2009. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[82] "Honorary Fellows". The Queen's College, Oxford. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[83] "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on 12 December 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2020.

[84] "Class of 2002 – Fellows". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2002. Archived from the original on 13 May 2008. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[85] "Oliver Sacks, Awakenings Author, Receives Rockefeller University's Lewis Thomas Prize". Rockefeller University. 2002. Archived from the original on 8 February 2009. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[86] Curriculum Vitae Archived 2 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine – website of Oliver Sacks

[87] "Curriculum Vitae". oliversacks.com. Archived from the original on 4 January 2010.

[88] "Tufts University Factbook 2006–2007 (abridged)" (PDF (4.7 MB)). Tufts University. p. 127. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[89] "Bard College Catalogue 2014–2015 – Honorary Degrees". Bard College. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2015.

[90] "Neurologist, peace activist among honorary graduands" (PDF). Gazette, vol. XXXII, no. 9. Queen's University. 7 May 2001. pp. 1, 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 April 2007. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[91] "Famed physician delivers Commencement address". Gallaudet University. 1 May 2005. Archived from the original on 8 February 2009. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[92] "Doctores honoris causa" (in Spanish). Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 15 August 2008.

[93] "2005 honorary degrees announced". University of Oxford. 14 February 2005. Archived from the original on 15 May 2007.

[94] Oliver Sacks @ Columbia University Archived 10 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine Arts Initiative @ Columbia University. 2009. Retrieved 10 October 2011

[95] "No. 58729". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 2008. p. 25.

[96] "Resume" (PDF). oliversacks.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 July 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2015.

[97] Bloom, Julie (12 September 2008). "Dr. Sacks's Asteroid". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 April 2009. Retrieved 14 August 2008.

[98] "Honorary FFRF Board Announced". Archived from the original on 17 December 2010. Retrieved 20 August 2008.

[99] Miller, Laura (2 May 2015). "The beautiful mind of Oliver Sacks: How his knack for storytelling helped unlock the mysteries of the brain". Salon. Archived from the original on 27 August 2015. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[100] Bergner, Daniel (20 August 2019). "A Biography of Oliver Sacks, Written by His Boswell". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 July 2020. Retrieved 11 July 2020.

[Prosopagnosia:_Sacks'-101] Katz, Neil (26 August 2010). "Prosopagnosia: Oliver Sacks' Battle with "Face Blindness"". CBS News. Archived from the original on 25 December 2013. Retrieved 3 February 2010.

[102] Sacks, Oliver (30 August 2010). "Face-Blind Why are some of us terrible at recognizing faces?". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2021. My problem with recognizing faces extends not only to my nearest and dearest but also to myself. Thus, on several occasions I have apologized for almost bumping into a large bearded man, only to realize that the large bearded man was myself in a mirror.

[103] "Dr. Oliver Sacks: Mind Over Muscle". 27 October 2015.

[104] "On Oliver Sacks' Obsession With Weightlifting". 18 April 2019.

[105] "On The Move: A Life". Oliver Sacks | Official Website of Author, Neurologist & Foundation.

[106] "'He saw beyond the illnesses into the souls of his patients'". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. 31 August 2015. Archived from the original on 10 May 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2022.

[107] Murphy, John (9 December 2010). "Eye to Eye with Dr. Oliver Sacks". Review of Optometry. Archived from the original on 30 December 2010. Retrieved 28 June 2011.

[108] Sacks, O. The Mind's Eye. Knopf (2010). ISBN 0307272087.

[Sacks-109] Sacks, Oliver (19 February 2015). "My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 19 February 2015. Retrieved 19 February 2015.

[Wijdicks2002-110] Wijdicks, Eelco F. M. (2022). "3. The neurologist in film". Neurocinema—The Sequel: A History of Neurology on Screen. CRC Press. pp. 55–58. ISBN 978-1-000-54916-4.

[Schuessler_a361-111] Schuessler, Jennifer (4 October 2024). "Oliver Sacks Archive Heads to the New York Public Library". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 October 2024.

[112] "Contribute to an Oliver Sacks Biography!". www.oliversacks.com. 9 July 2019.

[113] "The New York Public Library Acquires Archive of Oliver Sacks". City Life Org. 4 October 2024. Retrieved 5 October 2024.

[114] "Letters by Oliver Sacks". Retrieved 11 December 2025.

[115] Review by Dwight Garner, The New York Times, 4 November 2024.

[116] Sacks, Oliver (January 1989). Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf – Oliver W. Sacks. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520060838. Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 24 August 2015.

[117] Sacks, Oliver (March 2002). Oaxaca Journal. National Geographic. ISBN 0792265211.

[118] Online version is titled "How Much a Dementia Patient Needs to Know" and is dated 25 February 2019.

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Oliver Sacks CBE FRCP
Sacks in 1985
Born	Oliver Wolf Sacks 9 July 1933 London, England
Died	30 August 2015 (aged 82) New York City, U.S.
Education	University of Oxford (BA, BM BCh)^[1]
Known for	Non-fiction books about his psychiatric and neurological patients
Partner	Bill Hayes (2009–2015)
Medical career
Profession	Physician, professor, author, neurologist
Institutions	New York University Columbia University Albert Einstein College of Medicine University of Warwick Little Sisters of the Poor
Sub-specialties	Neurology
Website	oliversacks.com
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2026/04/10

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