Oliver Wolf Sacks
(born July 9, 1933, London, Eng.) British-U.S. neurologist and writer. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 to study neurology at the University of California, and in 1965 he joined the faculty at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Many of his books relate case histories of neurologically damaged people. His empathy with those afflicted with strange conditions, including
Tourette syndrome,
amnesia, and autism, has been the hallmark of his writings. His book
Awakenings (1973), about the long-term effects of
sleeping sickness, was filmed in 1990; other books include
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986) and
An Anthropologist on Mars (1995).
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