Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015), termed "the poet laureate of medicine" by The New York Times, was a man of infinite compassion, whose scientific and literary accomplishments made him the first public intellectual in the field of medicine and a revered figure. London-born, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and eccentric from his earliest days (his first friend was the periodic table!), Sacks was dogged by homophobia (his mother called him "an abomination"), self-destructiveness (including extensive drug use as a young man), obsessions with swimming, motorcycling, and body-building -- and for many years the hostility of the medical establishment. Ironically, it was the Robin Williams/Robert De Niro Hollywood movie of his book, Awakenings, that led to his acceptance by the scientific community. As an expert in Asperger's and Tourette's syndromes, Parkinson's disease, colorblindness, migraines, and a panoply of rare neurological conditions -- Sacks wrote books that turned case histories into compelling stories of living, breathing people. Ric Burns's documentary, which draws upon extensive interviews with Sacks made just after learning that he is dying, does justice to a fascinating, multi-faceted personality: a great man who was also a profoundly good one.