Oliver Sacks 生日禮請查周期表。NYPL The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of Oliver Sacks,訃聞。"Gratitude". 30年前的傳記作者Lawrence Weschler

Oliver Sacks Foundation 

We are excited to share that NYPL The New York Public Library has acquired the archive of Oliver Sacks, pioneering physician and beloved author who bridged the fields of medicine, science, and the humanities. The complete archival record encompasses over 80 years worth of documents, from Sacks’s birth in 1933 until his death at 82 in 2015. It comprises 375 linear feet of papers as well as rare volumes, audiovisual material, and memorabilia.

“Oliver Sacks transformed how people have come to understand the human brain and individuality—and in doing so, reshaped humanity itself,” Julie Golia, Associate Director, Manuscripts, Archives, Rare Books at The New York Public Library, said. “The Sacks archive reveals his empathic approach to research and medical care, and it documents the personal experiences of countless neurodiverse patients, subjects, and friends who fueled and shaped his writing. The collection is vast in size and scope, and breathtakingly beautiful in its details. The Library is looking forward to welcoming new generations of scholars and learners to explore the remarkable personal and intellectual legacy of Oliver Sacks.”

Learn more: https://www.nypl.org/....../nypl-acquires-oliver-sacks......

: Oliver Sacks at The New York Public Library, 2011

Oliver Sacks Foundation

"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.”

During the last few months of his life, Oliver Sacks wrote a set of essays in which he explores his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. These four essays were collected into a small book in 2015. The title of the book is, fittingly, "Gratitude".

What are you grateful for today?

所有心情：

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Dr. Sacks's friend Lawrence Weschler was featured on Humans of New York yesterday. We love reading all of the (more than 3,000!) beautiful, thoughtful comments.

“Thirty-five years ago I was a staff writer for the New Yorker, and I was working on a biography of Oliver Sacks. I had about fifteen notebooks full of interviews. We were meeting for dinner two or three nights per week. But at some point he asked if I could leave out the fact that he was gay. And I couldn’t do it. His sexuality tied him up in knots. And I thought those knots helped explain why he became such an amazing neurologist. So I agreed to stop writing, but we remained good friends. Shortly before he died last year, he called me and asked me to finish the book. So I’m trying to figure out where to begin. Thirty years ago I was going 100 mph in an aircraft carrier, and I was asked to stop on a dime. Now I’ve got to figure out how to start it back up.”

“If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.” - Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and acclaimed author, has died at 82

INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

Oliver Sacks, eminent neurologist and author, dies aged 82


Author who wrote Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat revealed in February that he was in the late stages of terminal cancer

 Oliver Sacks. His book Awakenings inspired the Oscar-nominated film of the same name which starred Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. Photograph: Adam Scourfield/BBC/AP Photo/APOliver Sacks, the eminent neurologist and writer, has died at his home in New York City. He was 82.

The cause of death was cancer, Kate Edgar, his longtime personal assistant, told the New York Times, which had published an essay by Sacks in February revealing that an earlier melanoma in his eye had spread to his liver and that he was in the late stages of terminal cancer.

Oliver Sacks obituary

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The London-born academic, whose book Awakenings inspired the Oscar-nominated film of the same name, wrote: “A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out – a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver.”

Sacks was the author of several books about unusual medical conditions, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and The Island of the Colourblind. Awakenings was based on his work with patients treated with a drug that woke them up after years in a catatonic state. The 1990 film version, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, was nominated for three Oscars including best picture.

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 Oliver Sacks, who died from terminal cancer on Sunday, describes the pleasure writing gives him. In the video posted on his YouTube channel, he says it ‘takes him to another place’ where he lets go of worries

A figure of the arts as much as the sciences, Sacks counted among his friends WH Auden, Thom Gunn and Jonathan Miller. As tributes were paid, Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times writer, praised his ability to make connections across the disciplines.

She wrote: “[He] was a polymath and an ardent humanist, and whether he was writing about his patients, or his love of chemistry or the power of music, he leapfrogged among disciplines, shedding light on the strange and wonderful interconnectedness of life – the connections between science and art, physiology and psychology, the beauty and economy of the natural world and the magic of the human imagination.”

Writing in the Guardian in May, author Lisa Appignanesi spoke of Sacks’s ability to transform his subjects into grand characters.

 Oliver Sacks in 2001. Photograph: Jurgen Frank/Corbis

“For all their lacks and losses, or what the medics call ‘deficits’, Sacks’s subjects have a capacious 19th-century humanity, “ she wrote. “No mere objects of hasty clinical notes, or articles in professional journals, his “patients” are transformed by his interest, sympathetic gaze and ability to convey optimism in tragedy into grand characters who can transcend their conditions. They emerge as the very types of our neuroscientific age.”

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Sacks was an avid chronicler of his own life. In his memoir, Uncle Tungsten, he wrote about his early boyhood, his medical family, and the chemical passions that fostered his love of science.

He was sent away from London during wartime bombing and endured bullying at boarding school. Feeling “imprisoned and powerless”, he developed a passion for horses, skiing and motorbikes. He got his first motorbike when he was 18. On the Move, the second instalment in his memoir, pictured a youthful, leather-and-jean-clad Sacks astride a large motorbike, not unlike Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones.

Growing up, he witnessed the growing torment of his schizophrenic brother and his treatment with drugs. Appignanesi said the seeds of Sacks’s later affinity with patients undoubtedly in part lies in that experience.

The memoirs reveal that his mother said: “I wish you had never been born”, when she learned about his homosexuality. He writes of a few love affairs, his road trips and obsessional bodybuilding. 

Sacks had nearly 1,000 journals and more letters and clinical notes upon which to draw for his autobiography.

When he revealed that he had terminal cancer, Sacks quoted one of his favourite philosophers, David Hume. On discovering that he was mortally ill at 65, Hume wrote: “I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company.

“I am ... a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.”

• This article was amended on 30 August 2015 to correct a misspelling of Oliver Sacks’s surname.

Oliver Sacks

By KATE MURPHY

Published: July 16, 2011

What’s on your mind? The Sunday Review asked Oliver Sacks, a physician, author and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center.

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Mike McGregor/Contour, via Getty Images

READING I’m rereading Baudelaire’s “Artificial Paradises,” which I first read — it must have been 50 years ago. I’m writing about hallucinations, all kinds of hallucinations, and Baudelaire is wonderful in his descriptions of his experiences with hashish and opium.
I read a lot of biographies, which are like patient case histories, really. I liked “The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.” It’s about the family of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is an icon in the philosophical world and one of my favorite philosophers. His brother, Paul, was a one-armed pianist who lost his arm during the First World War and being wealthy, he commissioned pieces for the left hand. Three other brothers committed suicide. It was a very interesting book and was written by Alexander Waugh, who was the grandson of Evelyn Waugh.
WATCHING “Star Trek,” the original series or “The Next Generation.” It has strong characters that I find believable. I visited the set of “Star Trek” several years ago and met Brent Spiner, the actor who played Data. I told him he was the hero of autistic people everywhere. I don’t think he knew what to make of that.
For laughter, fun and joy, I turn to the Ealing Comedies with Alec Guinness. One of my favorites is “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” where Alex Guinness plays eight different characters.
FOLLOWING I don’t know what Facebook and Twitter are since I don’t use a computer. But a friend gave me a hat with a built-in compass, since I have no sense of direction. It beeps when you face north and the intensity of the beeps shows how close you are. I like to think it’s improving my awareness but truthfully, I don’t think I’m getting any better. And I get a little embarrassed wearing a hat that beeps.
CONSUMING Herring, especially at this time of year when the tender new catch comes in from Holland, and Zico coconut water — I drink a gallon a week.
COLLECTING I buy lumps of metals because I’m a periodic-table freak. I bought rhenium for my 75th birthday, osmium for my 76th birthday, iridium for my 77th birthday. But I may not be able to afford more than a tiny pellet of platinum for my 78th birthday this year.

Kate Murphy is a journalist in Houston who contributes regularly to The New York Times.

機械翻譯

奧利弗薩克斯通過 KATE墨菲出版日期：2011年7月16號
什麼是您的想法？星期天回顧問奧利弗薩克斯，醫生，作家，教授，神經病學和精神病學在哥倫
閱讀我重讀波德萊爾的“人造天堂”，我第一次讀 - 它必須是50年前。我正在寫關於幻覺，各種幻覺，是美好和波德萊爾在他的描述他的經驗與印度大麻和鴉片。我看了很多的傳記，這就像病人病歷，真的。我喜歡“房子維特根斯坦：一個家庭在戰爭中，”這是對家庭的維特根斯坦，誰是圖標的哲學世界，一個我最喜歡的哲學家。他的兄弟，保羅，是一次武裝鋼琴家誰失去了他的手臂在第一次世界大戰和正在富裕，他委託作品的左手。其他三個兄弟自殺。這是一個非常有趣的書，作者是亞歷山大沃，誰是孫子伊夫林沃。看“星際迷航”原系列或“下一代”，具有很強的人物，我覺得可信。我參觀了集“星際迷航”幾年前，並會見了布倫特 Spiner，演員誰發揮的數據。我告訴他，他是英雄自閉症的人隨處可見。我不認為他知道該怎麼做。對於笑聲，有趣，快樂，我想談談伊令喜劇與亞歷克吉尼斯。其中我最喜歡的是“有心人心臟和冠冕”裡扮演亞歷吉尼斯八種不同的字符。下面，我不知道什麼是Facebook和Twitter，因為我不使用電腦。但是，朋友給了我一頂帽子帶內置指南針，因為我沒有方向感。當你面對這聲北部和強度的蜂鳴聲顯示了如何關閉你。我喜歡認為這是提高我的意識，但說實話，我不認為我得到任何好轉。而我得到一個有點不好意思戴帽子的蜂鳴聲。消費鯡魚，特別是在每年的這個時候，當新的招標趕上部分來自荷蘭和濟科的椰子水 - 我喝了一個星期加侖。我買的蒐集塊狀金屬的，因為我是一個週期表的怪胎。我買了錸我75歲生日，我的76歲生日鋨，銥為我的77歲生日。但我可能無法負擔超過一個微小的鉑顆粒為我今年78歲生日。凱特墨菲是一名記者在休斯頓誰定期為紐約時報。

他說，他有時也不太明瞭自己。奧立佛．薩克斯（Oliver Sacks）死了，今年八十二歲。
我曾經坐在他的書房裏和他談話。那是紐約City Island的靠海平房，毫不起眼的一棟，走過去時不會想到這裏住了一位作家。
我對作家的書房並不那麼好奇，但是奧立佛．薩克斯剛好是個例外，我讀過他幾本書，對他描述的腦科病人故事深感興趣。我常常想知道，他是怎麼樣的作家，以及他是怎麼樣的醫生，他有什麼樣的神秘之腦。那一本「錯把妻子當帽子的人」真是本精采的好書。



樓上有兩個房間，一是臥房，一是書房，他的書桌簡單，面對窗，背對門，除了書桌，他有一大型影印機器，每當談起重要的書，他便站起來複印。我坐在他樓上的書房裏，看不到他任何收藏，除了書，他的書房看起來像一個中學生樸素的房間，沒有陳設，沒有裝飾。
樓下的客廳裏也都是書，角落裏一架三角鋼琴，「是父母留給我的」。他把他為我泡的立頓袋茶放在鋼琴上，他就站在大鋼琴前說話，多半都在談書，一本接一本，他不斷地搬出不同的書冊佐證，我將書名一一抄下，開始心虛自己的書讀得如此少。
大部分時間我都在聽他說話，因為談到《色盲島》那本書，最後他提起兩本談毒藥和迷幻劑的書，我想問他是否空暇時彈彈鋼琴，但我終於沒問。這個房子可能從來不歡迎訪客，沒有電視，沒有大的餐桌，沒有舒服的椅子．沒有休閒的氣氛，我很快便萌生退去的念頭，我已明白，在這棟房子只能寫作，除此無他。
他並不是一個親切友善的人，我想他不是，看得出來他並不喜歡人，他怯生且不耐煩，我們交談時，有慕名者打電話來，他立刻追問：「誰給你這個電話號碼？」使得對方馬上掛上電話。他幾乎沒有什麼朋友，除了他的病人。他和他的病人幾乎相依為命，比家人還親。
他坐在樓上的房間裏說起他的童年，二次世界大戰發生時，他被家人送至英國北安頓的一家寄宿學校，學校的校監幾乎以處罰學生為樂，他激動氣憤之餘，從此只對與人無關的事情感到興趣。我想他指的是植物或大腦。
如果不是因為他提起童年，我大約不會明白，在《色盲島》上，他為什麼會對一株奇怪的棕櫚樹感動莫名，以及他喜歡到荒島旅行。他喜歡的是像「侏羅紀公園」那樣的地方，所以他到南海的米克內西亞島，但卻從此展開了一個重要的心靈之旅，他說，《色盲島》是他與自己對話的紀錄。
如果不是那個下午，我大約也不會明白，為什麼他擺在床頭的書是理查．羅德的《笑死病》。在蠻荒的新幾內亞，蔓延一種類似瘋牛症的「笑死症」病菌，因為死亡太多，食人族無力埋葬，所以與親友見面時，以說「我吃你」代替「你好」來問候彼此。
我回憶他的書房，我曾經在他的書房裏看到他的靈魂。我稍稍明白，他所嚮往那種蠻荒時期的原始古老，那種叫deep time的感受，與宇宙自然合一的感受。是的，他是一個活在deep time的單身漢， 他是少數具有deeptime 氣質的醫生與作家。
(本文大部份摘錄即將出版的<此刻有誰在世上某處走>.陳玉慧.遠足出版)