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Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. He felt that the brain was the "most incredible thing in the universe" and therefore important to study.〔("Remembering Oliver Sacks" ), Charlie Rose interview from 1995〕 He became widely known for writing best-selling case histories about his patients' disorders, with some of his books adapted for film and stage.〔〔 After Sacks received his medical degree from The Queen's College, Oxford in 1960, he interned at Middlesex Hospital (part of University College, London) and moved to the U.S. He then interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).〔 He relocated to New York in 1965, where he became professor of neurology at New York University School of Medicine. Between 2007 and 2012, he was professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also held the position of "Columbia Artist", which recognized his contributions to art and science. He was also a faculty member at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and a visiting professor at the University of Warwick.〔("NYU Langone Medical Center Welcomes Neurologist and Author Oliver Sacks, MD" ). Newswise.com. 13 September 2012.〕 Sacks was the author of numerous best-selling books, mostly collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His writings have been featured in a wide range of media; the ''New York Times'' called him a "poet laureate of contemporary medicine", and "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century".〔In the Region of Lost Minds. (''New York Times'' archive ), retrieved 18 September 2015.〕 His books included a wealth of narrative detail about his experiences with patients, and how they coped with their conditions, often illuminating how the normal brain deals with perception, memory and individuality. ''Awakenings'' (1973), an autobiographical account of his efforts to help people with encephalitis lethargica regain proper neurological function, was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film 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''. In 2008 Sacks was awarded a CBE for services to literature during the Queen's Birthday Honours.〔("Oliver Sacks dies in New York aged 82" ). BBC. Retrieved 30 August 2015〕 ==Early life== Sacks was born in Willesden, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian Jewish physician (died June 1990),〔''An Anthropoligist on Mars'' (Knopf, 1995), p. 70〕 and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks had a large extended family, including the director and writer Jonathan Lynn and first cousins, the Israeli statesman Abba Eban and the Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann. When Sacks was six years old, he and his brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands where he remained until 1943.〔 Unknown to his family, at the school, he and his brother Michael "... subsisted on meagre rations of turnips and beetroot and suffered cruel punishments at the hands of a sadistic headmaster".〔Nadine Epstein, (2008), (Uncle Xenon: The Element of Oliver Sacks ) ''Moment Magazine''〕 He attended St Paul's School in London. During his youth he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir ''Uncle Tungsten''. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford in 1951,〔 obtaining a BA degree in physiology and biology in 1956.〔 Although not required, Sacks chose to stay on for an additional year to undertake 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. Sacks adds, "And now, in Sinclair's lectures, it was the history of physiology, the ideas and personalities of physiologists, which came to life."〔 Sacks then became involved with the school's Laboratory of Human Nutrition under Sinclair. Sacks focused his research on the toxic, and commonly abused drug Jamaica ginger, 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."〔 His tutor at Queen's and his parents, seeing his lowered emotional state, suggested he extricate himself from academic studies for a period. His parents then suggested he spend the summer of 1955 living on a kibbutz in Israel, where the physical labour would help him.〔 Sacks would later describe his experience on the kibbutz as an "anodyne to the lonely, torturing months in Sinclair's lab".〔 He said he lost from his previously overweight body. He spent time travelling around the country, with time 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."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oliver Sacks」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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