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Seeing the deep past in plants
Oliver Sacks
Scientist
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Views | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 321. Being close to 'Stereo Sue' and Howard Engel | 1 | 122 | 00:47 |
| 322. Finishing up the hallucinations book | 124 | 02:11 | |
| 323. My books to date | 1 | 144 | 02:07 |
| 324. My first encounter with evolution | 194 | 02:07 | |
| 325. Seeing the deep past in plants | 193 | 00:49 | |
| 326. Marie Stopes' Ancient Plants | 182 | 02:06 | |
| 327. Marie Stopes' botanical work and its influence on me | 170 | 04:25 | |
| 328. Feeling at home with Darwin | 167 | 02:59 | |
| 329. The origin of individuals: Gerald Edelman and Darwin | 164 | 03:01 | |
| 330. The Bloomsbury Group | 1 | 184 | 01:06 |
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Another encounter with the deep past which stays with me was that I had often been taken to Kew Gardens and shown plants which existed and covered the earth, ferns, cycads, ginkgo trees, long before there were flowering plants. And if one went to the Natural History Museum in the Fossil Botany Department, you would see the bark and trunks, roots of trees which had existed... which had disappeared 300 million years ago, giant horsetails, giant scale trees.
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: Seeing the deep past in plants
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: Kew Gardens, Natural History Museum
Duration: 49 seconds
Date story recorded: September 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012
