He died British neurologist and author Oliver Sacks – Ambito.com

     International
    
    
    Sunday August 30, 2015
    
         
    

Author of “Awakenings”

 Oliver Sacks
   

The British writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of bestsellers such as “Awakenings” and “The man who mistook his wife a hat, “and great popularizer worldwide neurology, died in New York at age 82 after suffering from terminal cancer, as reported by his collaborator Kate Edgar told The New York Times.

Back in February Sacks himself announced through an article in the same newspaper that US since early 2015 had liver metastases, nine years after he extirpasen a tumor in the eye. Since then knew his remaining weeks.

“Above all, I was a being with senses, a thinking animal, on this wonderful planet and this in itself has been a great privilege and an adventure,” wrote the author of books on the recesses of the human mind that adapted to film, sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into 25 languages.

For nine years had been successfully operated a tumor in the eye but lost the sight. In his farewell to the readers, the popular scientist also wrote: “A month ago I was in good health, even downright good to my 81, was swimming a kilometer and a half every day But my luck was a limit.. Shortly after I learned that I have multiple liver metastases. “

” Nine years ago I discovered in the eye a rare tumor, ocular melanoma. Although radiation and laser treatment to which I submitted to remove it will eventually leave me blind in that eye, it is very rare for this type of tumor is played. Well, I belong to the unfortunate 2 percent, “he added.

The international fame Sacks as a science writer was fired for his work, which he explained to his readers as Tourette’s syndrome or Asperger which earned him great fame as a science writer. That it had received about 10,000 letters a year, and “invariably replied to under ten, older than 90 years or people who are in prison.”

Sacks, Born in London in 1933 and based in New York, was the son of a couple of Jewish doctors. He grew up with three older brothers also became doctors. He studied at various universities and graduated in psychology, biology and medicine, while learned to gain experience in various institutions such as the Middlesex Hospital in London, where he focused on neurology.

In 1960 was vacation to Canada, but shortly after arriving wrote his parents a telegram just read: “I’m staying.” Then he moved to the United States, first to California and then New York. There he opened a neurology and worked for decades in the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx. During those years, he gave seminars and treated patients at the University of Columbia.

For the 70 began writing popular books about people who due to illness got out of the usual. “I write stories of survival,” he once said about the protagonists of his books were patients, friends, relatives or even himself. Through their stories, funny and written with simplicity, he Sacks normal questioned again and again. “A little brain injury and ended up in a completely different world,” he would say.

His literary debut was with “Awakenings” (1973), a bestseller that years later was made into a film in a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, nominated in 1991 for an Oscar as best actor protagonist.

Another of his biggest hits was “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”, which tells 24 stories on how little it takes to get a person of his supposed normality. He also published “The eyes of the mind” (2011) and “Hallucinations” (2013), among others.

In his essays, published in Spanish by Anagrama, Sacks tries to explain what makes us human beings, the strange journey between the mind and something which could be called soul. How does memory work? Why and how we see, come see the eye or brain? What does it mean to hear, hear what’s around us? What are love and sexual desire? What we say about the hallucinations? To what extent an autistic is isolated from the world in which he lives? Do we define a disease that we suffer ?, were some of your questions.

His last book was an autobiography entitled “On the Move – A Life,” published this year. Little is known about the private life of Sacks until the publication of this work, also with stories of patients, but where last count of his long life of professional success and often lonely personally.

There reveals that during the 50s he told his parents he was gay and her mother replied: “I wish you had never been born.” Soon, the young Sacks left home and the UK to carve his own life across the Atlantic, where he lived until his death.

Sacks was a death foretold, he, with impressive sincerity he wrote about death. “It is no longer an abstract concept (…) but a present, a present too close that can not be denied.” He was the man who could say goodbye and describe his life as a “privilege” and “an adventure”. “ I do not pretend I’m not afraid. But the feeling that prevails in me is gratitude “, he wrote before dying man whose great contribution to the world was to have come to millions of readers to those who company insists on treating as different and always considered equal Sacks

.