Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.

A gripping journey into the recesses of the human mind Daily Mail Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness Guardian Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction ... Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be Sunday Times This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it The Times Dr. Sacks's most absorbing book ... His tales are so compelling [because] many of them serve as eerie metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine but of modern man New York Magazine A decidedly original approach ... In addition to possessing the technical skills of a twentieth-century doctor, [Sacks] sees the human condition like a philosopher-poet. The resultant mixture is insightful, compassionate and moving ... he recounts these histories with the lucidity and power of a gifted short-story writer ... a masterpiece of clinical writing New York Times