Oliver Sacks Lecture

Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and the author of "Awakenings," will give the Alex Krieger '95 Memorial Fund Lecture in the Skinner Recital Hall at Vassar College at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, February 12. The lecture, titled "Journey Into Wonder: Reflections on a Chemical Boyhood," is free and open to the public.

His lecture will be followed by a question and answer session and a book signing.

As a physician and writer, Sacks is concerned above all with the link between body and mind and the ways in which the whole person adapts to different neurological conditions.

In 1966, Sacks went to work in a chronic hospital in the Bronx where he encountered an extraordinary group of patients, many of whom had spent decades in strange, frozen states, unable to initiate movement, like human statues – they were survivors of the great epidemic of sleepy sickness that had swept the world from 1916-1927. They became the subjects of his book, "Awakenings," which later inspired a play by Harold Pinter, "A Kind of Alaska," and the 1990 Hollywood movie, "Awakenings," starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

Sacks is perhaps best known for his best-selling 1985 collection of case histories based on his neurological experience, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." In 1989, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on the neuroanthropology of Tourette's syndrome, a condition marked by involuntary tics and utterances.

His seven books, which also include "Migraine," "A Leg to Stand On," "Seeing Voices," "An Anthropologist on Mars," and, most recently, "The Island of the Colorblind," are international bestsellers. In the fall of 2001, he released his memoir, "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood," in which he looks back on his childhood in wartime London.

The Alex Krieger '95 Memorial Fund lecture is named for a member of the Vassar College class of 1995 who was killed in an automobile accident in his freshman year. His parents established the fund in his memory to bring writers and humorists to the campus.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Cathy Jennings, Office of Campus Activities, at (845) 437-5370, as far in advance as possible to request appropriate and reasonable accommodations.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2002.