Oliver Sacks (b. 9 July 1933) was a British neurologist, naturalist, and author. During his career, Sacks revolutionized how the public perceived neurological disorders. Rather than viewing his patients through the cold lens of pathology, he approached them with deep empathy, chronicling their struggles and adaptive triumphs through beautifully written clinical case histories.
Sacks published numerous best-selling books that explored the strange and resilient landscape of the human mind. His most notable works included Awakenings (1973), a book that inspired the Academy Award-nominated film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985); Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007); Hallucinations (2012); and his bestselling autobiography, On the Move: A Life (2015).
Oliver was born in London to a family of Jewish physicians and earned his medical degree at Oxford University before moving to the United States in 1961, where he completed an internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and his residency in neurology and neuropathology at UCLA. While in San Francisco, Sacks became a lifelong close friend of fellow British expat and leather queen, the gay poet Thom Gunn. Outside of the clinic, Sacks lived an unconventional life filled with heavy weightlifting, long-distance swimming, a passion for motorcycles, sexual adventure, and the consumption of staggering amounts of pharmaceuticals. And then one day he gave it all up—the drugs, the sex, the motorcycles, the bodybuilding—and moved to New York City where he spent his career practicing neurology.
Described by others as deeply shy and unequivocally eccentric, Sacks was a closeted gay man who lived alone for most of his life. As detailed in his 2015 memoir (in which he finally publicly came out), his mother's highly negative reaction to his homosexuality when he was young led him to conceal his identity and pursue celibacy for a large portion of his adulthood. But in 2008, he began a friendship with the writer and New York Times contributor Bill Hayes, a friendship that slowly evolved into a committed long-term partnership that lasted until Sacks' death at age 82 on 30 August 2015.
The recipient of numerous awards and honorary doctorates, in 2008, in the Queen's Birthday Honours, Sacks was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to medicine. The New York Times called him "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century". And Sacks, who never got around to becoming a naturalized American citizen, once categorized himself as a “resident alien”. “I rather like the words,” he said. “It's how I feel. I'm a sympathetic, resident, sort of visiting alien." 🏳️🌈
(The Gay Aesthetic)
