Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood [Paperback]

'An intensely moving and funny account of his chaotic scientific upbringing.' --Richard Holmes, Brilliant and Unusual Books about Science to inspire Non-Scientists - The Week

"A rare gem.... Fresh, joyous, wistful, generous, and tough-minded."-"The""New York Times Book Review"

"This book underlies everything else Dr. Sacks has written, "and" is worthy to stand with the great scientific memoirs, for it's passion, its insight, its sense of history and its felicity." -Paul Theroux"

""Fired by Sacks's enthusiasm-obviously genuine, impossible to feign-bursting forth in all directions. . . .The book recounts the growth of a formidable young mind opening up to the order and beauty of the material world." -"Newsday

""Sack's study of a mind [is] as tough as tungsten, as fluid as mercury . . . as precious as gold." -"The Seattle Times
" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Oliver Sacks, distinguished neurologist and master storyteller, comes a magical account of childhood, told with the charm and power of his celebrated case histories.

In Uncle Tungsten Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy’s adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind. ‘If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind’ The Times ‘The amalgamation of personal recollection and scientific history makes a luminous, inspiring book’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Uncle Tungsten is really about the raw joy of scientific understanding; what it is like to be a precocious child discovering the alchemical secrets of reality for the first time; the sheer thrill of finding intelligible patterns in nature’ Guardian

Oliver Sacks was educated in London, Oxford, California and New York. He is a professor of clinical neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings.