British neurologist, writer Oliver Sacks dies aged 82

London, Aug 31: Oliver Sacks, the world's best-known neurologist through his series of bestselling books, has died of cancer at his home in New York at the age of 82.

He shot to fame with his book "Awakenings" in 1973, which was introduced into China in 2011, described case histories from the patients in "sleepy sickness" of neurological experience. The book inspired an Oscar nominated film of the same name, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

Besides publishing several popular books on the neural abnormality, in the last years of his life Sacks wrote about his own experience of facing cancer and partial blindness.

He also made remarkable contributions to research as a professor of neurology successively at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University and New York University.

Sacks was born on July 9, 1933 into a medical and scientific family in Cricklewood, northwest London.

IANS