OBITUARY

In Memoriam: Oliver Sacks, MD

(July 9, 1933, to August 30, 2015)
Lewis P. Rowland, MD

O
liver Sacks, MD, was a man in motion. He was a mo-
torcyclist, mile-a-day swimmer, weight lifter, and
traveler to exotic lands. He wrote 13 books,1-13 sev-
eral of which were best sellers. Part of the proceeds of these
sales are now in the Oliver Sacks Foundation, a nonprofit or-
ganization he established to continue publishing his work, pre-
serve his archives, and support use of the case history to ad-
vance humanism in medicine. The cover of his most recent
book is adorned by a photograph of a young Dr Sacks astride a
motorcycle and dressed in a black leather outfit. The book, a
memoir published shortly before his death, is entitled On the
Move: A Life.13
Oliver Sacks was born in London on July 9, 1933, the son
of 2 physicians and 1 of 4 brothers. He received his BA degree
in physiology and biology from Queen’s College, Oxford, and
his medical training at Middlesex Hospital in London. Arriv-
ing in the United States in 1961, he did further training at Mt.
Zion Hospital in San Francisco, followed by a residency in
neurology and neuropathology at UCLA (University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles). He came to New York in 1965, working
as a fellow and later as an instructor and then professor at
Oliver Sacks, MD
Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He also joined the fac-
ulty at New York University in 1992 as adjunct professor. He
then moved in 2007 to Columbia University as a professor of other drugs have also been applied. In the wake of these new
neurology and psychiatry and as Columbia University Artist and unproved agents, a new neurologic specialty—movement
in recognition of his unique ability to bring together the arts disorders—emerged in the 1970s.
and sciences. In 2012, he moved back to New York University Several of Dr Sacks’ books are autobiographical. A Leg to
as a professor of neurology, a position he held at the time of Stand on3 describes the result of a mountain climbing acci-
his death. dent; the author fractured a femur but, despite severe pain,
In addition to the books, Dr Sacks wrote in other venues: managed to make it down the mountain. During the following
The New York Times,14 The New Yorker,15,16 and The New York 3 weeks, he experienced an odd lack of “ownership” of the de-
Review of Books.17 A few books were adapted as motion pic- afferented limb and struggled to understand this feeling in both
tures or inspired plays, documentaries, and even a ballet. physiologic and philosophical terms. His inquisitiveness and his
One of his early books was Awakenings,2 which was based personal experience led him to study mind-altering drugs, es-
on his experience as a neurologist at a nursing home in the pecially during the 1960s, and he later wrote a book entitled
Bronx borough of New York City. The story attracted a wide- Hallucinations.12
spread audience in the Oscar-nominated film starring Robert A 2015 essay in The New York Times described his mortal
De Niro as a patient with postencephalitic parkinsonism who illness. The piece was entitled My Own Life,14 which was also
was severely disabled by widespread, 4-limb rigidity. The the name used for the autobiography of David Hume, the 18th-
character based on Dr Sacks was played by the late Robin century philosopher.18 Dr Sacks’ disease was a uveal mela-
Williams. noma that had metastasized to his liver. During his final ill-
The sorry state of these survivors of the epidemic of en- ness, he expressed gratitude for a long and well-lived life.
cephalitis lethargica was dramatically reversed by the admin- Dr Sacks was not merely a skilled popularizer, he was a
istration of levodopa, a drug that was greeted enthusiasti- scholar of genius proportions as he delved into the history of the
cally by neurologists for providing a visibly more effective neurologic conditions he was studying. He explored the litera-
treatment of what was presumably an untreatable and chronic ture that had been written by the great neurologists of the past,
age-related neurodegenerative disorder (parkinsonism). The including Hughlings Jackson, Henry Head, Kurt Goldstein, and
limitations of levodopa therapy include adverse effects; thus, A. R. Luria. In his final book,13 Dr Sacks wrote with verve and

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openness about his life, his rejection by the medical establish-
ment, and his mother’s stern disapproval of his homosexuality.
Oliver Sacks died on August 30, 2015. At his bedside were
the 2 most important people in his life: Bill Hayes, the writer who
was Dr Sacks’ partner for the past 7 years, and Kate Edgar, his
collaborator and editor, who will now direct the Oliver Sacks
Foundation.
In 1990, I was president of the American Academy of Neu-
rology. It was the year we launched the Decade of the Brain.
To commemorate this event, we searched for an appropriate
speaker to address the annual meeting of the academy. Sev-
eral members of the board, including me, were in favor of ask-
ing Oliver Sacks to address the meeting. One member dis-
missed this idea. “We need a prominent investigator, not a story
teller,” said the dissenter. “But this ‘story teller’ happens to be
the most famous neurologist in the entire world,” I replied. Dr
Sacks spoke to an audience of several hundred neurologists and
their guests and then spent an hour after his talk signing pro-
grams. For me, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
1. Sacks O. Migraine. Los Angeles: University of California Press; 1970.
2. Sacks O. Awakenings. London, England: Duckworth; 1973.
3. Sacks O. A Leg to Stand on. New York, NY: Summit Books; 1984.
4. Sacks O. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. New York, NY: Summit Books;
1985.
5. Sacks O. Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf. Berkeley: University
of California Press; 1989.
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Obituary
6. Sacks O. An Anthropologist on Mars. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf; 1995.
7. Sacks O. The Island of the Colorblind. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf; 1997.
8. Sacks O. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York, NY: Alfred
A Knopf; 2001.
9. Sacks O. Oaxaca Journal. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group;
2002.
10. Sacks O. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York, NY: Alfred A
Knopf; 2007.
11. Sacks O. The Mind’s Eye. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf; 2010.
12. Sacks O. Hallucinations. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf; 2012.
13. Sacks O. On the Move: A Life. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf; 2015.
14. Sacks O. My own life: Oliver Sacks on learning he has terminal cancer. The
New York Times. February 19, 2015:A25.
15. Sacks O. The catastrophe: Spalding Gray’s brain injury. The New Yorker. April
27, 2015:26-30.
16. Sacks O. Filter fish: at life’s end, rediscovering the joys of a childhood
favorite. The New Yorker. September 14, 2015:40.
17. Sacks O. Urge. New York Rev Books. September 24, 2015:4.
18. Hume D. My own life. https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/humelife
.html. Published April 18, 1776. Accessed December 18, 2015.
Author Affiliation: Neurological Institute, Columbia University Medical Center,
New York, New York.
Corresponding Author: Lewis P. Rowland, MD, Neurological Institute,
Columbia University Medical Center, 710 W 168th St, PO Box 147, New York, NY
10032 (lpr1@columbia.edu).
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.
(Reprinted) JAMA Neurology February 2016 Volume 73, Number 2 247