IN MEMORIAM
Drs . Seymour Diamond , Oliver Sacks , Arthur Elkind , 1991
Dr . Oliver Sacks , the noted neurologist and prolific writer , was also keenly interested in headache medicine . He was born into a family of physicians in London and like many children of his age , was sent to a rural area of England when World War II erupted . His book , Uncle Tungsten , described his experiences at the boarding school but also his fascination with chemistry . He received his medical degree from Queen ’ s College , Oxford , and interned in San Francisco during the early 1960s . In 1965 , Dr . Sacks moved to New York to begin a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx . His affiliation with that institution ended in 2007 , when he began a teaching position at Columbia . In 2012 , he became a professor of neurology at the New York University School of Medicine .
In 1971 , Dr . Sacks published his book , Migraine . His book , Awakenings , was published in 1973 , and adapted in 1990 for the cinema , in an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name , and starred Robin Williams as the physician and Robert DeNiro as one of his patients with a rare form of encephalitis – encephalitis lethargica . On April 27 , 1991 , Doctor Sacks received the Professional Support Award from the National Headache Foundation at its fifth annual fundraiser in New York City .
In an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times in February of this year , Dr . Sacks announced that he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer , and was expected to live only a few more months . He continued to write and only a couple of weeks before his death , he submitted an essay , “ Sabbath ,” which appeared in New York Times .
Dr . Sacks was a close personal friend of National Headache Foundation Board member , Mark Green , MD and his wife , Leah Green , MD . We are pleased to present Dr . Mark Green ’ s moving tribute to Dr . Sacks . HW
28 HeadWise ® | Volume 5 , Issue 1 • 2015