The indestructible individuality of chemistry

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Uncle Tungsten's mentoring

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The indestructible individuality of chemistry

Oliver Sacks Scientist

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I’ve... I've said that I was interested in numbers, especially prime numbers, and the feeling of their solidity and invariance. I think this transferred itself to the elements, and because they also were, seemed to be, have an indestructible individuality of their own. And so 74 is always tungsten, 23 is always vanadium, so the number and the element go together. And my father, as I’ve mentioned, had a little dispensary as well as testing... testing urines and things and... and my mother had been interested in the chemistry, and so my parents encouraged me to put together a little laboratory at the back of the house.

There was a glassed-in conservatory and then a room which was sometimes used for... for washing clothes in the old days, but I was given this room and everything next to it for a laboratory of my own, and I was greatly encouraged by an uncle of mine whom we called Uncle Tungsten jokingly. In fact he was Uncle Dave, but he manufactured, his firm, Tungstalite, manufactured lamps with tungsten filaments, and so he became Uncle Tungsten. And he enjoyed chemistry himself, and very much stimulated my interest. At that time there had never been a schoolteacher who had stimulated my interest.

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 indestructible individuality of chemistry

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: Uncle Tungsten

Duration: 2 minutes, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: September 2011

Date story went live: 02 October 2012