Oliver Wolf Sacks, MD, FRCP, CBE (born 9 July 1933, London, England), is a British neurologist residing in New York City. Sacks is the author of several bestselling books, including several collections of case studies of people with neurological disorders. His 1973 book Awakenings was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name in 1990 starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a North London Jewish couple: Samuel Sacks, a physician, and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks had a large extended family, and among his first cousins are Israeli statesman Abba Eban, writer and director Jonathan Lynn, and economist Robert Aumann. Two of Sacks's elder brothers, David and Marcus, were to become general medical practitioners in their own right.

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. He attended St. Paul's School, London, UK.

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 University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, in 1958 he went on to incept as a Master of Arts (MA) and earn an BM BCh, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.

Similar to 0 things you like: