Email Us Contact CCT   Advertise with CCT! Advertise with CCT University University College Home College Alumni Home Alumni Home
November/December 2007
 
   

Previous 

Previous

 || 

This Issue

 || 

Next 

Next

AROUND THE QUADS

Oliver Sacks Joins Columbia

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Photo: Eileen Barroso

Oliver Sacks, the best-selling author and renowned neurologist who has been described as “the poet laureate of medicine,” joined Columbia on July 1 and gave his first Grand Rounds lecture, as P&S professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, on September 7. Sacks has been designated a “Columbia Artist,” a new University position. He will continue to see patients at the neurological and psychiatric institutes and also will be involved in training students.

In this appointment, the 74-year-old Sacks embodies the multidisciplinary scholarship that has been one of President Lee C. Bollinger’s priorities. As Bollinger told The New York Times, the appointment exemplifies the University’s effort to bridge the gap between the study of neuroscience and other disciplines in which scholars work to understand human behavior, including economics, social science, law and the arts. Sacks will range freely across Columbia’s departments, teaching, giving public lectures, conducting seminars, seeing patients and collaborating with faculty members. He will teach in the creative writing department as well as at P&S.

Sacks, who was born in London and educated at Oxford, comes to Columbia after 42 years at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was a clinical professor of neurology. While he describes himself as “a relatively solitary figure,” in recent years, he grew more interested in working with colleagues and eager “to return to some of the teaching I loved and of which I haven’t had much lately.” He will pursue his longtime interest in schizophrenia, and in that vein plans to see patients and consult with Columbia’s experts in the fields.

Sacks is the author of 10 books, most of them best-sellers, including Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. His latest book is Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

 

Previous 

Previous

 || 

This Issue

 || 

Next 

Next

 

 
Search Columbia College Today
Search!
Need Help?

Columbia College Today Home
CCT Home
 

November/December 2007
This Issue

September/October 2007
Previous Issue

 
CCT Credits
CCT Masthead