Award-Winning Author/Neurologist Explores Link Between Creativity and the Brain in Lawrence University Convocation

APPLETON, WIS. -- Noted neurologist and best-selling author Dr. Oliver Sacks explores the mysteries of the mind Thursday, Nov. 14 in a Lawrence University convocation.

Sacks presents "Creativity and the Brain" at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. Sacks also will conduct a question-and-answer session immediately following his address. The event is free and open to the public.

As a physician and writer, Sacks' career has focused on the link between body and mind and the ways in which the whole person adapts to different neurological conditions. Creating compassionate drama from the dysfunctions of the brain, Sacks has written seven books, including "Awakenings," the best-selling story of the survivors of sleeping sickness which became the inspiration for the 1990 Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

His best known work -- "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" -- is a collection of 20 case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette's syndrome to autism, schizophrenia to Alzheimer's disease. That book was later adapted into a play and an opera.

Sacks, 69, joined the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1975 and has served as a clinical professor of neurology there since 1985. He also holds an adjunct professor of psychiatry appointment at the New York University School of Medicine and is a scientific advisor at the Institute of Music and Neurologic Function at Beth Abraham Hospital in New York.

Sacks, whose parents were both physicians, was born in London, England. He earned his medical degree at Oxford University before moving to the United States in the early 1960s. He conducted an internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology at UCLA before moving to New York.

He was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 and his writing has been honored with numerous awards, including the National Association of Science Writers Award in 1994 for "An Anthropologist on Mars," which profiles seven neurologically impaired patients, and the Hawthornden Prize for "Awakenings."