Oliver Sacks

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This week on One on One, Riz Khan meets the world-famous neurologist and author, Dr. Oliver Sacks.

He created medical history when he gave an experimental drug to patients in frozen trances – and inspired the Hollywood film, Awakenings with his story.

He has become a leading figure in the study and documentation of how our minds work.

Born in London into a family of doctors just before World War II, Sacks was evacuated at the age of six to a boarding school in the Midlands.

Music played a large part in his early life. His father was a pianist and his brothers played woodwind instruments, but Sacks was essentially a shy boy with a huge interest in science and nature.

His book, Awakenings, made into a 1990 Oscar-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, tells the story of how, as a young doctor arriving in New York in the mid-1960s, Sacks tried a then-experimental drug on patients in catatonic trances.

Since then Sacks has become a prolific writer, focusing largely on the function and dysfunction of the human mind. A self-proclaimed eccentric, the popular neurologist has even had an asteroid named after him.

Cancer was discovered in Sacks’ right eye in 2005, impairing his sight. But as his many fans would say, even with his now almost monocular vision, the doctor still sees deep into the enigmatic human mind. 

This episode of One on One aired from Friday, February 20, 2009.