SOURCE: Christ, Mary. “Oliver Sacks's Science Project.” Book, no. 19 (November-December 2001): 48.

In the following essay, Christ offers a brief profile of Sacks's life and literary career.

A man walks into a bar carrying a spectroscope. The punch line? There isn't one—this is just a typical Friday night for Oliver Sacks, world-famous neurologist. “They have all sorts of interesting fluorescent lights,” says Sacks, who had wandered into a pub near his office in lower Manhattan. He has carried the pocket spectroscope—a device for observing the color breakdown of light—since childhood. “Within ten minutes I had everyone talking about spectroscopy instead of sex,” he laughs. “An achievement!”

His enthusiasm for science is contagious, and it shows elsewhere—in his book sales, for one. Sacks, the author of highly readable and affecting case studies of the brain, such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and...