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The thoughts of Heinrich Hertz on his early death
Oliver Sacks
Scientist
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Hertz, who discovered radio waves – which used to be called Hertzian waves – and really he was the first man to... to confirm Clerk Maxwell’s notion of light as an electromagnetic radiation and one which might have all sorts of wavelengths and frequencies beyond our... our visible spectrum. Hertz was a wonderful physicist and human being who died in his 20s, and there’s a very remarkable letter he wrote to his mother in which he... he said he was sad about this, but to have a short full life was better than having a long empty life. He would have preferred a long full life, but the essential thing was fullness. And perhaps in his way, Ralph felt some of this. Perhaps it started to come on him when he knew he was ill and... and he decided he must have some personal expression and started writing the... the fine essays and narratives and memoirs, which in a way were putting life in perspective, and putting his own life in a... in a broader context.
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: The thoughts of Heinrich Hertz on his early death
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: Hetrzian waves, Heinrich Hertz, Clerk Maxwell, Ralph Siegel
Duration: 1 minute, 25 seconds
Date story recorded: September 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012
