Watch this Oliver Sacks interview from 1989.
In 1989, not long after Oliver Sacks wrote the bestseller, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” and just before his 1973 memoir “Awakenings” made its movie debut starring Robin Williams, “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” interviewed the famed neurologist.
Sacks — who died on Sunday at age 82 after a long bout with cancer — talked about his research, breakthroughs and commitment to recording the stories of those who might otherwise be forgotten.
“I have a need to look at people, who perhaps through no fault of their own, through biological chance, have been thrust out of the mainstream, and in general, to see the tremendous adaptability of the human organism and the human spirit,” Sacks said.
When correspondent Joanna Simon asked Sacks how he’d like to be remembered in 100 years, he said:
“I would like to be thought that I had listened carefully to what patients and others had told me, that I had tried to imagine what it was like for them, and that I had tried to convey this. And to use a biblical term, the feeling, ‘he bore witness.’”
The post WATCH: 26 years ago, Oliver Sacks wanted to be remembered like this appeared first on PBS NewsHour.