Book

Uncle Tungsten

: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and bestselling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals–also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the pe

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Oliver Sacks (6)

“It was at this time that I sought for (and sometimes achieved) an intense concentration, a complete absorption in the worlds of mineralogy and chemistry and physics, in science--focusing on them, holding myself together in the chaos.”

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: Seek, sought, Achieve, Concentration, Absorption

“I became terrified of him, for him, of the nightmare which was becoming reality for him, the more so as I could recognize similar thoughts and feelings in myself, even though they were hidden, locked up in my own depths.”

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: Scared, terrified, Nightmare, Fear, Reality

“When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were, I answered, “smoked salmon and Bach.””

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: five, Child, kid, Childhood, Memory

“It came upon me sometime in my fifteenth year that I no longer woke up with sudden excitements—“Today I will get the Clerici solution! Today I will read about Humphry Davy and electric fish! Today I will finally understand diamagnetism, perhaps!” I no longer seemed to get these sudden illuminations,…”

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: Excitement, Body, Mind, illumination, Epiphany

“But it was not sudden — I did not wake up one morning and find that chemistry was dead for me; it was gradual, it stole upon me bit by bit. it happened at first, I think, without my even realizing it.”

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: chemistry, Passion, gradual, slowly, happening

“Hydrogen selenide, I decided, was perhaps the worst smell in the world. But hydrogen telluride came close, was also a smell from hell. An up-to-date hell, I decided, would have not just rivers of fiery brimstone, but lakes of boiling selenium and tellurium, too.”

— Oliver Sacks, amazon.com

Tagged: Hydrogen selenide, chemical, Gas, Smell, worst