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Views | Duration | ||
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41. Talking like I write and vice versa | 504 | 01:41 | |
42. Anecdote: Writing about Cold Storage | 496 | 01:11 | |
43. Being friends with Eric Korn 'before memory' | 1001 | 01:48 | |
44. The first time I met Jonathan Miller | 889 | 00:56 | |
45. Forming a school literary society with Jonathan Miller and Eric... | 642 | 02:03 | |
46. Eric Korn's memory for poetry | 566 | 00:25 | |
47. Jonathan Miller's mimicry | 602 | 00:33 | |
48. The strange neural phenomena: heautoscopy | 728 | 00:56 | |
49. How to show gratitude to our biology teacher? | 461 | 01:04 | |
50. Little boys' hobbies | 465 | 01:24 |
Jonathan, Eric and I all became very close. Neither of them shared my love of chemistry which... which had developed earlier and was very strong, but was probably fading by the time I met Jonathan. But anyhow, we were all moving towards biology, and we all fell in love with a wonderful biology teacher, Sidney Pask, whom we had at school. I think it was Jonathan who proposed that to show our gratitude and affection we kiss Sidney. But Sidney always had a pipe, and we didn’t know how this pipe would get in the way of a kiss – whether one could kiss to one side of the pipe or whether the pipe would somehow be pushed down Sidney’s throat. So we... we never did kiss Sidney.
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: How to show gratitude to our biology teacher?
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: Jonathan Miller, Eric Korn, Sydney Pask
Duration: 1 minute, 4 seconds
Date story recorded: September 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012