The Last Curious Man
The author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is obsessed with colourblindness and botany, the Grateful Dead and Mozart, and the joy of eating fish for dinner every night.
He was born in London, England in 1933 and obtained his medical deggree at Oxford. He moved to the USA in the 1960's and has lived in New York since 1965.
He began working as a consulting neurologist for Beth Abraham in 1966, where he encountered an extraordinary group of patients, many of whom had spent decades in strange frozen states, like human statues unable to initiate movement. These patients were the survivors of the great epidemic "the sleepy sickness" that swept the world from 1916 - 1927.
They became the subject of his book "Awakenings" which later inspired the movie of the same name starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.
He is perhaps best known for his best-selling collection of neurological case studies "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" published in 1985. |
