The medical discovery for which Sacks is best known dates to his clinical experiences in the 1960s, when he first encountered the survivors of the great epidemic of sleeping sickness that had killed and disabled millions of people four decades earlier. Many of the survivors he encountered had been in catatonic trances since the 1920s, but Sacks's administration of the new drug L-Dopa often brought them back into consciousness.
His book Awakenings recounted the experiences of the patients, and, in turn, inspired Harold Pinter's play A Kind of Alaska. The book was also rendered into the Penny Marshall film Awakenings, which featured Robin Williams as the doctor and Robert De Niro as a middle-aged victim of the illness who is awakened from his trance for a time with the L-Dopa treatment.
Sacks also is author of the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which concerns the strange neurological disorder in which a person's perceptions of the world are scrambled. In addition, he has written The Island of the Colorblind, which combines his keen interest in medical mysteries with his love of botany and South Seas travel; An Anthropologist on Mars, a collection of clinical tales; and other books and articles.
Sacks will be the William and Myrtle Harris Distinguished Lecturer. The event is co-sponsored by the organization Words Matter, a three-year pilot project funded by the Caltech president's office that offers Caltech undergraduates frequent opportunities for close contact with accomplished writers; and the Beckman Institute, a research facility on campus for inventing new methods, new materials, and new instrumentation for biology and chemistry. For directions to Caltech, call (626) 395-4652.
Contact: Robert Tindol (626) 395-3631