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'Awakenings' Neurologist Oliver Sacks Dies

'Awakenings' Neurologist Oliver Sacks Dies

Oliver Sacks, the British-born neurologist who chronicled his patients' brain disorders with wit and compassion in a series of bestselling books, has lost his battle with cancer.

He died on Sunday, aged 82, at his home in Manhattan, his personal assistant said.

Dr Sacks announced in February that he was in the late stages of terminal cancer after a tumour in his eye spread to his liver.

He shot to fame with his 1973 book Awakenings, which was based on his work at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx with patients whom he gave a drug that woke them up after years of catatonia.

The 1990 film version, starring Robin Williams as the doctor and Robert De Niro as a patient, was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture.

Dr Sacks - who was known as the "poet laureate" of modern medicine - was awarded several honorary degrees recognising his contribution to science and literature.

In 2008, he was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

He was the author of several other bestselling books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985).

The titular patient of the book, which inspired a 1986 opera, was a man with visual agnosia.

An Anthropologist on Mars (1995) focused on autism and Tourette syndrome, along with neurological conditions.

One of the subjects was a painter injured in a car accident that had left him able to see only in black and white.

While Dr Sacks was widely praised for putting a human face on disorders that many saw as freakish, some accused him of profiting from the suffering of those he treated.

Tom Shakespeare, a British disability rights activist, called him "the man who mistook his patients for a literary career".

Dr Sacks was born in London in July 1933 to a Jewish mother and father who were both doctors.

His mother, a surgeon, did not cope well with her son's admission that he was gay.

"You are an abomination," she told him, Dr Sacks once recalled. "I wish you had never been born."

He graduated in medicine from Queen’s College, Oxford, before moving to America in the early 1960s for an internship at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.

After failing as a clumsy laboratory assistant, Dr Sacks received the appointment in New York City that put him on the path to global recognition.

Of his cancer diagnosis, he told the New York Times: "Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."

Dr Sacks, who was also a talented pianist and keen swimmer, is survived by his partner, the writer Bill Hayes.