Genius Award recipient Oliver Sacks (left) with Liberty Science Center CEO Paul Hoffman (center) and LSC Board Member Jennifer Chalsty (right) at the 2012 Liberty Science Center Genius Gala.

The New York Times has referred to Oliver Sacks as “the poet laureate of medicine,” best known for his compassionate explorations of the far borderlands of neurological experience. Sacks’s books and essays were translated into dozens of languages, inspiring specialists in medicine, philosophy, ethics, neuroscience, anthropology, physical therapy, and psychology — as well as the general public. He deeply influenced our understanding of how we adapt to illness as patients, the ways we care for the neurologically challenged, and the fundamental ways in which illness affects our identities as individuals and communities.

The staff of Liberty Science Center joins the rest of the world in mourning his passing, and consider ourselves fortunate to have shared the same plane of existence with him for so long.