Being friends with Eric Korn 'before memory'

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The first time I met Jonathan Miller

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Being friends with Eric Korn 'before memory'

Oliver Sacks Scientist

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Eric, I met before either of us had ever gone to school because we were both taken in our perambulators to Grange Park in Kilburn – Grange Park was about equidistant between my house in Cricklewood – our house in Cricklewood – and his house in Swiss Cottage. We... so we knew each other and were becoming verbal at three and four and five. We knew each other when the war started, and so it was possible for Eric to say... when I came back in 1943 and went to the Hall School in Hampstead, which he also went to, and he commented that I had changed. He thought I’d been rather aggressive as a five year old, and that I had become very timid. And I think this... this was probably an accurate observation. I had in fact been intimidated at school. So Eric I’ve... I've always known... Eric goes back, as it were, before memory. There was never a time when I was introduced to Eric, you know, we were probably both... I’m six months his senior, we were probably both two months old and two years old, and have no record of this.

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was born in England. Having obtained his medical degree at Oxford University, he moved to the USA. There he worked as a consultant neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital where in 1966, he encountered a group of survivors of the global sleepy sickness of 1916-1927. Sacks treated these patients with the then-experimental drug L-Dopa producing astounding results which he described in his book Awakenings. Further cases of neurological disorders were described by Sacks with exceptional sympathy in another major book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat which became an instant best seller on its publication in 1985. His other books drew on his rich experiences as a neurologist gleaned over almost five decades of professional practice. Sacks's work was recognized by prestigious institutions which awarded him numerous honours and prizes. These included the Lewis Thomas Prize given by Rockefeller University, which recognizes the scientist as poet. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru.

Title: Being friends with Eric Korn 'before memory'

Listeners: Kate Edgar

Kate Edgar, previously Managing Editor at the Summit Books division of Simon and Schuster, began working with Oliver Sacks in 1983. She has served as editor and researcher on all of his books, and has been closely involved with various films and adaptations based on his work. As friend, assistant, and collaborator, she has accompanied Dr Sacks on many adventures around the world, clinical and otherwise.

Tags: Cricklewood, Kilburn, Swiss Cottage, Hampstead, Eric Korn

Duration: 1 minute, 48 seconds

Date story recorded: 19-23 September, 2011

Date story went live: 02 October 2012