Obituaries

In Memory of
Oliver Wolf Sacks
July 9, 1933 - August 30, 2015

NEW YORK (AP) — There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Sacks, 82, died Sunday at his home in New York City, his assistant, Kate Edgar, said. In February, he had announced that he was terminally ill with a rare eye cancer that had spread to his liver.

As a practicing neurologist, Sacks looked at some of his patients with a writer's eye and found publishing gold.

In his best-selling 1985 book, ‘ ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,’ ‘ he described a man who really did mistake his wife's face for his hat while visiting Sacks' office, because his brain had difficulty interpreting what he saw. Another story in the book featured twins with autism who had trouble with ordinary math but who could perform other amazing calculations.

Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time in 2006, declaring, ‘ ‘Legions of neuroscientists now probing the mysteries of the human brain cite this book as their greatest inspiration.’ ‘

Sacks' 1973 book, ‘ ‘Awakenings,’ ‘ about hospital patients who'd spent decades in a kind of frozen state until Sacks tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams. It was nominated for threeAcademy Awards.

Still another book, ‘ ‘An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales,’ ‘ published in 1995, described cases like a painter who lost color vision in a car accident but found new creative power in black-and-white, and a 50-year-old man who suddenly regained sight after nearly a lifetime of blindness. The experience was a disaster; the man's brain could not make sense of the visual world. It perceived the human face as a shifting mass of meaningless colors and textures.

After a full and rich life as a blind person, he became ‘ ‘a very disabled and miserable partially sighted man,’ ‘ Sacks recalled later. ‘ ‘When he went blind again, he was rather glad of it.’ ‘

Despite the drama and unusual stories, his books were not literary freak shows.

‘ ‘Oliver Sacks humanizes illness ... he writes of body and mind, and from every one of his case studies there radiates a feeling of respect for the patient and for the illness,’ ‘ Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, said in 2001. ‘ ‘What others consider unmitigated tragedy or dysfunction, Sacks sees, and makes us see, as a human being coping with dignity with a biological problem.’ ‘

When Sacks received the prestigious Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing in 2002, the citation declared, ‘ ‘Sacks presses us to follow him into uncharted regions of human experience — and compels us to realize, once there, that we are confronting only ourselves.’ ‘

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Sacks said he tries to make ‘ ‘visits to other people, to other interiors, seeing the world through their eyes.’ ‘

His 2007 book, ‘ ‘Musicophilia,’ ‘ examines the relationship between music and the brain, including its healing effect on people with such conditions as Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's, autism and Alzheimer's.

‘ ‘Even with advanced dementia, when powers of memory and language are lost, people will respond to music,’ ‘ he told The Associated Press in 2008.

Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in 1933 in London, son of husband-and-wife physicians. Both were skilled at recounting medical stories, and Sack's own writing impulse ‘ ‘seems to have come directly from them,’ ‘ he said in his 2015 memoir, ‘ ‘On the Move.’ ‘

In childhood he was drawn to chemistry (his 2001 memoir is titled ‘ ‘Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood’ ‘) and biology. Around age 11, fascinated by how ferns slowly unfurl, he set up a camera to take pictures every hour or so of a fern and then assembled a flip book to compress the process into a few seconds.

‘ ‘I became a doctor a little belatedly and a little reluctantly,’ ‘ he told one interviewer. ‘ ‘In a sense, I was a naturalist first and I only came to individuals relatively late.’ ‘

After earning a medical degree at Oxford, Sacks moved to the United States in 1960 and completed a medical internship in San Francisco and a neurology residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. He moved to New York in 1965 and began decades of neurology practice. At a Bronx hospital he met the profoundly disabled patients he described in ‘ ‘Awakenings.’ ‘

Among his other books were ‘ ‘The Island of the Colorblind’ ‘ (1997) about a society where congenital colorblindness was common, ‘ ‘Seeing Voices’ ‘ (1989) about the world of deaf culture, and ‘ ‘Hallucinations’ ‘ (2012), in which Sacks discussed his own hallucinations as well as those of some patients.

Even apart from his books, he wrote prolifically. He began keeping journals at age 14, and in his 2015 memoir he said he'd filled more than a thousand at last count. He kept a notebook nearby when he went to bed or swam, never knowing when thoughts would strike. They often arrived in complete sentences or paragraphs.

As his hearing worsened, he even devoted a notebook to instances in which he misheard something, like ‘ ‘cuttlefish’ ‘ for ‘ ‘publicist.’ ‘

Yet, he rarely looked at his journals after filling them. ‘ ‘The act of writing is itself enough ... ideas emerge and are shaped, in the act of writing,’ ‘ he said in his 2015 book.

Writing gave him ‘ ‘a joy, unlike any other,’ ‘ he said. ‘ ‘It takes me to another place. ... In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and that I have been writing all day.’ ‘

In the AP interview, Sacks was asked what he'd learned from peering into lives much different from the norm.

‘ ‘People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever,’ ‘ he replied. ‘ ‘And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.’ ‘

Sacks reflected on his own life this year when he wrote in the New York Times that he was terminally ill. ‘ ‘I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions,’ ‘ he wrote.

In the time he had remaining, he said, he would no longer pay attention to matters like politics and global warming because they ‘ ‘are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people. ... I feel the future is in good hands.’ ‘

‘ ‘I cannot pretend I am without fear,’ ‘ he wrote. ‘ ‘But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. ... Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.’ ‘

__



MALCOLM RITTER, Associated Press

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.





























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































DR. OLIVER SACKS OBITUARY

7/9/1933 - 8/30/2015





NEW YORK (AP) — There was the blind man who had the disastrous experience of regaining his sight. The surgeon who developed a sudden passion for music after being struck by lightning. And most famously, the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

Those stories and many more, taking the reader to the distant ranges of human experience, came from the pen of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Sacks, 82, died Sunday at his home in New York City, his assistant, Kate Edgar, said. In February, he had announced that he was terminally ill with a rare eye cancer that had spread to his liver.

As a practicing neurologist, Sacks looked at some of his patients with a writer's eye and found publishing gold.

In his best-selling 1985 book, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," he described a man who really did mistake his wife's face for his hat while visiting Sacks' office, because his brain had difficulty interpreting what he saw. Another story in the book featured twins with autism who had trouble with ordinary math but who could perform other amazing calculations.

Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time in 2006, declaring, "Legions of neuroscientists now probing the mysteries of the human brain cite this book as their greatest inspiration."

Sacks' 1973 book, "Awakenings," about hospital patients who'd spent decades in a kind of frozen state until Sacks tried a new treatment, led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams. It was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Still another book, "An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales," published in 1995, described cases like a painter who lost color vision in a car accident but found new creative power in black-and-white, and a 50-year-old man who suddenly regained sight after nearly a lifetime of blindness. The experience was a disaster; the man's brain could not make sense of the visual world. It perceived the human face as a shifting mass of meaningless colors and textures.

After a full and rich life as a blind person, he became "a very disabled and miserable partially sighted man," Sacks recalled later. "When he went blind again, he was rather glad of it."

Despite the drama and unusual stories, his books were not literary freak shows.

"Oliver Sacks humanizes illness ... he writes of body and mind, and from every one of his case studies there radiates a feeling of respect for the patient and for the illness," Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, said in 2001. "What others consider unmitigated tragedy or dysfunction, Sacks sees, and makes us see, as a human being coping with dignity with a biological problem."

When Sacks received the prestigious Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing in 2002, the citation declared, "Sacks presses us to follow him into uncharted regions of human experience — and compels us to realize, once there, that we are confronting only ourselves."

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Sacks said he tries to make "visits to other people, to other interiors, seeing the world through their eyes."

His 2007 book, "Musicophilia," examines the relationship between music and the brain, including its healing effect on people with such conditions as Tourette's syndrome, Parkinson's, autism and Alzheimer's.

"Even with advanced dementia, when powers of memory and language are lost, people will respond to music," he told The Associated Press in 2008.

Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in 1933 in London, son of husband-and-wife physicians. Both were skilled at recounting medical stories, and Sack's own writing impulse "seems to have come directly from them," he said in his 2015 memoir, "On the Move."

In childhood he was drawn to chemistry (his 2001 memoir is titled "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood") and biology. Around age 11, fascinated by how ferns slowly unfurl, he set up a camera to take pictures every hour or so of a fern and then assembled a flip book to compress the process into a few seconds.

"I became a doctor a little belatedly and a little reluctantly," he told one interviewer. "In a sense, I was a naturalist first and I only came to individuals relatively late."

After earning a medical degree at Oxford, Sacks moved to the United States in 1960 and completed a medical internship in San Francisco and a neurology residency at the University of California, Los Angeles. He moved to New York in 1965 and began decades of neurology practice. At a Bronx hospital he met the profoundly disabled patients he described in "Awakenings."

Among his other books were "The Island of the Colorblind" (1997) about a society where congenital colorblindness was common, "Seeing Voices" (1989) about the world of deaf culture, and "Hallucinations" (2012), in which Sacks discussed his own hallucinations as well as those of some patients.

Even apart from his books, he wrote prolifically. He began keeping journals at age 14, and in his 2015 memoir he said he'd filled more than a thousand at last count. He kept a notebook nearby when he went to bed or swam, never knowing when thoughts would strike. They often arrived in complete sentences or paragraphs.

As his hearing worsened, he even devoted a notebook to instances in which he misheard something, like "cuttlefish" for "publicist."

Yet, he rarely looked at his journals after filling them. "The act of writing is itself enough ... ideas emerge and are shaped, in the act of writing," he said in his 2015 book.

Writing gave him "a joy, unlike any other," he said. "It takes me to another place. ... In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and that I have been writing all day."

In the AP interview, Sacks was asked what he'd learned from peering into lives much different from the norm.

"People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever," he replied. "And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world."

Sacks reflected on his own life this year when he wrote in the New York Times that he was terminally ill. "I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions," he wrote.

In the time he had remaining, he said, he would no longer pay attention to matters like politics and global warming because they "are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people. ... I feel the future is in good hands."

"I cannot pretend I am without fear," he wrote. "But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. ... Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

__

MALCOLM RITTER, Associated Press

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/oliver-sacks-obituary/175687339#sthash.B4AsHdlF.dpuf

































In a February 15, 2015, op-ed in the New York Times, renowned neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks announced that he has terminal cancer. "At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out..." he revealed, before penning an incredibly thoughtful, moving essay on facing mortality—on processing one's place and legacy in the world, and appreciating what time remains. "There is no time for anything inessential," Dr Sacks wrote, "I shall no longer look at 'NewsHour' every night." As a tribute to Dr Sacks, Medscape has collected some thoughts from physicians, physician authors, and Dr Sacks' colleagues on his legacy and contributions to medicine and literature. Sandeep Jauhar, MD, PhD, Director, Heart Failure Program, Long Island Jewish Medical Center; author of Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) When I was in graduate school at Berkeley, well before I decided to go to medical school, I once made a list of people I admired for a career interests test. The list included Einstein, Freud, Larry Bird, my brother Rajiv— "a little"—Orson Welles, and Oliver Sacks. Sacks' writings have had a profound effect on me and other physicians (and physician writers). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars—these are books I remember so vividly, for their foreignness, and yet their worlds seemed so real because of that foreignness. Sacks wrote about his neurologically quirky characters with so much sincerity and humanity that he made you want to go anywhere with him, both in the literary sense but also in a personal sense. He seemed to be such a good, caring doctor and human being, the kind of person you'd want as a best friend. I didn't go to medical school to become a writer, but Oliver Sacks showed me that both pursuits were possible and could nourish each other. In my book, he (and perhaps Abraham Verghese) are the best physician writers we have. Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, Chair of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center; Psychiatrist in Chief, New York-Presbyterian Hospital; immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association; author of Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (Little, Brown, 2015) I first encountered Oliver Sacks in 1979, when I began working at the Bronx Psychiatric Center. I sent a patient of mine to the neurology clinic for evaluation and received a report that immediately grabbed my attention. Handwritten in meticulously styled script and sparkling prose was a compelling narrative of the patient's history and elucidation of his diagnosis. Rather than the dry, clinically formulaic medical consults that I was used to getting (and guilty of myself), this consult read like a short story. Wondering who had composed this extraordinary missive, I visited the clinic and introduced myself to Oliver. He was a gnome-like little man, short and stout in stature with bald head and full beard, a twinkle in his eye and an unusual cadence in his voice, with a lilting British accent. From that brief interaction, it was apparent to me that Oliver was a uniquely gifted person with amazing observational and expressive talents. I was struck by the incongruity of this rarefied talent squirreled away in a dingy clinic of a state mental institution. Despite these modest beginnings, I was not surprised when, years later, he became a best-selling author. Our careers came full circle in 2007, when he joined the faculty at Columbia University as an Arts and Sciences Scholar; he quickly became a favorite with students and residents. However, Oliver suffered from hearing, ophthalmologic, and orthopedic problems, which began to limit the scope of his activities. Through it all, he continued to be intellectually and physically vital, and continued his writing. From that first consult that I received to the recent New York Times article. Oliver has remained true to his medical muse. Carolyn Robinowitz, MD, Former President, American Psychiatric Association; Former Dean, Georgetown University Live as though you will die tomorrow; learn as if you will live forever. —Attributed to Gandhi When I was president of the APA, I chose Dr Sacks to lead the William C. Menninger Memorial Convocation Lecture at the APA Annual Meeting in May of 2008. Historically, this lecture addresses scientific issues in a manner accessible to both a professional academic audience as well as a broader public. As always, Oliver Sacks was informative as well as accessible, thought-provoking, and inspirational. In his article "My Own Life," Dr Sacks once again combines instruction with inspiration, this time with the most important topic: his own life and impending death. Dr Sacks has captivated and informed the lay public as well as scientific communities with his scholarly yet accessible writing, leading many young people to study neuroscience and the complex interactions of biology and behavior. Now, his frank and thoughtful essay prompts all of us to scrutinize our own lives—our personal and professional relationships, values, and priorities. For most of us, thoughts of our death are accompanied by denial and delay; yet it is in thinking about death that we think most strongly about life—what is most meaningful to us, how we want to live, and what will be our legacy to our dear ones and our communities. Dr Sacks' candid and courageous presentation reminds us of his brilliance and insight and helps us address, in our own ways, the opportunities as well as limits of our lives.Continue Reading The neurologist and author Oliver Sacks recently wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times about his impending death and the light this news casts on his life. His reflections are the epitome of equanimity. What we hear from him is not anxiety, rancor, or regret but rather gratitude, love, and resolve. It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/mindfulnessmatters/2015/02/oliver-sacks-writes-his-pre-obituary.html#ixzz3zztbxL7h Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/mindfulnessmatters/2015/02/oliver-sacks-writes-his-pre-obituary.html#ByBL1j0rCYoRVcoQ.99 Jul. 9, 1933 London City of London Greater London, England Death: Aug. 30, 2015 Manhattan New York County (Manhattan) New York, USA Physician, Author. A respected and pioneering neurologist, he shall be best remembered for his numerous popular non-fiction books. Born Oliver Wolf Sacks, he was raised in London as a more-or-less observant Jew, was the child of physician parents, and was drawn to medicine early. Sent to a rural boarding school which he hated during the early years of World War II, after the war he studied at London's St. Paul's School then at Queen's College, Oxford from which he received his M.D. in 1958. Following a brief time in Canada, he moved to San Francisco where he completed his neurology residency at Mt. Zion Hospital, then took further training at UCLA before relocating to New York in 1965 where, after finding that he was not cut-out for research, he accepted a position at the chronic care facility of Beth Abraham Hospital in The Bronx. There, Dr. Sacks encountered a number of patients with encephalitis lethargica, the residual victims of a four-decade-earlier encephalitis epidemic who had been left completely rigid and catatonic. Reasoning that there was residual function left in these individuals, he began giving them small doses of L-dopa, a then new Parkinson's Disease drug which has miracle results in some patients and intolerable side effects in others. The results were mixed, whith some showing no benefit and others experiencing a complete remission of symptoms, though some, but not all, of the latter did regress to their former state. In 1970, Dr. Sacks published his first book entitled "Migraine", a basic study of a common condition treated by virtually all doctors, though 'cured' by none, then in 1973 he followed with "Awakenings", a recounting of his experiences with encephalitis lethargica which was turned into a 1990 Academy Award nominated film starring Robin Williams as Dr. Sacks. A longtime professor at New York University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he maintained a busy practice and kept writing, 1n 1985 publishing "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", possibly his best-known work, the title character a patient exhibiting prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, with other case studies describing Korsakoff's Syndrome (alcoholic dementia), autistic savant syndrome occuring in twins, and oither rare conditions. While continuing his clinical and academic work, he kept writing, his books including the 1989 "Seeing Voices", a look at deafness, 1995's "An Anthropologist on Mars", the story of an autistic university professor, and the 2008 "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain", a piece which drew on his own lifelong love for music, his skills as a top level pianist, and his long advocacy of music therapy. Diagnosed with choroidal melanoma of his right eye in 2001, he underwent treatment which took the sight of that eye, but which was thought at that time to have cured his cancer. In 2007, he became professor of Psychiatry and neurology at Columbia, there concentrating primarily on treatment of seizure disorders, though in 2012 he returned to New York University where he remained until his death; his honors were many, among them 1996 election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, being made Honorary Fellow of Queens College Oxford in 1999, 2002 receipt of membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2008 designation as Commander of the Order of the British Empire for Services to Literature, and many honorary doctorates. Diagnosed with terminal cancer due to hepatic metastasis of his melanoma in January of 2015, he remained active as long as he was able. At his death his literary output remained in print and the planet 84928 Oliversacks had carried his name since 2003. (bio by: Bob Hufford) Burial: Unknown Edit Virtual Cemetery info [?] Maintained by: Find A Grave Originally Created by: Bob Hufford Record added: Aug 30, 2015 Find A Grave Memorial# 151438715 Dr Oliver Wolf Sacks Added by: Bob Hufford Photos may be scaled. Click on image for full size. R.I.P -Anonymous Added: Feb. 8, 2016 You are sorely missed. - Joy Britcliffe Added: Feb. 2, 2016 RIP - Sanshl Added: Dec. 11, 2015 There are 63 more notes not showing... Click here to view all notes... Do you have a photo to add? Click here