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Little boys' hobbies
Oliver Sacks
Scientist
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Views | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 41. Talking like I write and vice versa | 505 | 01:41 | |
| 42. Anecdote: Writing about Cold Storage | 497 | 01:11 | |
| 43. Being friends with Eric Korn 'before memory' | 1005 | 01:48 | |
| 44. The first time I met Jonathan Miller | 890 | 00:56 | |
| 45. Forming a school literary society with Jonathan Miller and Eric... | 643 | 02:03 | |
| 46. Eric Korn's memory for poetry | 567 | 00:25 | |
| 47. Jonathan Miller's mimicry | 603 | 00:33 | |
| 48. The strange neural phenomena: heautoscopy | 728 | 00:56 | |
| 49. How to show gratitude to our biology teacher? | 462 | 01:04 | |
| 50. Little boys' hobbies | 465 | 01:24 |
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I... I’ve always tended to have sort of arbitrary or possibly reasonable preferences – I’ve mentioned that I used to have a preference for prime numbers. I then later developed a preference for certain elements, the so-called heavy transition metals, of which tungsten is an example, and I settled on a zoological group of the cephalopods, squids, cuttlefish, octopus, as mine. Eric settled on a group of the sea cucumbers, or holothurians, and Jonathan settled on a group of segmented worms, or polychetes. And... and we really became extremely expert in our... in our different specialties. I think Eric and I especially – Eric had discovered a place in Pentonville where one could get pickled holothurians and... and other things. Before that I used to go to a chemical place and buy chemicals, often very dangerous chemicals which would never be sold now, which would be illegal to sell.
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: Little boys' hobbies
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: Pentonville
Duration: 1 minute, 24 seconds
Date story recorded: September 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012
