A memoir of growing up in World-War-II England as part of an extraordinary scientific family. 336pp, Picador, £17.99 Uncle Tungsten was the relative with the lightbulb factory and a penchant for spectacular chemistry. This book is part of a new 6-book cover-collage design. More than simply a memoir, Sacks’ book pivots between recollections of his own freewheeling adventures in chemistry and accounts of those who inspired him: the pioneers in the field of chemistry and his remarkable family, including his Uncle Dave, the titular … Oliver learns that tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, it is tougher than steel, and it keeps its strength at high temperatures-an ideal metal. In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks' extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the 14-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his "Uncle Tungsten", whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. The “Uncle Tungsten” of the book’s title is Sacks’s Uncle Dave, who manufactured light bulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire, and who first initiated Sacks into the mysteries of metals. Use our custom writing services or get access to database of 127 free essays samples about uncle tungsten. Wells, and the periodic table. But it frightened me too, made me feel that my atoms were only on loan and might fly apart at any time, fly away like the fine talcum powder I saw in the bathroom.” ― Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten Signup now and have "A+" grades! “...We ourselves were made of the very same elements as composed the sun and stars, that some of my atoms might once have been in a distant star. Sacks, a neurologist perhaps best known for his books Awakenings (which became a Robin Williams/Robert De Niro vehicle) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, invokes his childhood in wartime England and his early scientific fascination with light, matter and energy as a mystic might invoke the transformative symbolism of … An uncle, for whom the book is named, was a manufacturer of light bulbs with tungsten filaments and encouraged him in setting up his own chemistry laboratory in the family laundry room, to do experiments. John McCrone's How the Brain Works will be out from Dorling Kindersley in spring 2002. Chosen as one of the Best Books of 2001 by the editors of Amazon.com, “I had intended, towards the end of 1997, to write a book on aging, but then found myself flying in the opposite direction, thinking of youth, and my own partly war-dominated, partly chemistry-dominated youth, in particular, and the enormous scientific family I had grown up in. John McCrone on the raw joy of scientific understanding for the young Oliver Sacks in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. Uncle Tungsten : memories of a chemical boyhood. Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and author.Born in Britain, and mostly educated there, he spent his career in the United States. Uncle Tungsten is profoundly illuminating and continually surprising.” 'This book is both a heartwarming account of a delightful, eccentric family life and an inspiring record of a remarkable intellectual odyssey' Mail on Sunday Uncle Tungsten vividly evokes a time when virtual reality had not yet displaced a hands-on knowledge of the world. So Uncle Tungsten had, in effect, a Nephew Tungsten! Publisher's Summary. Uncle Tungsten is an autobiographical account of Oliver Sacks' childhood, yet in parts, it also reads like a young boy's open love letter to Science; affectionately named after Sacks’ uncle (due to his lifelong obsession with metals, in particular, tungsten, whose filaments he used daily in the manufacturing of incandescent light bulbs). :: Site by KPFdigital :: Admin Login. But as Sacks writes, the family influence extended well beyond the home, to include the groundbreaking chemists and physicists whom he describes as “honorary ancestors, people to whom, in fantasy, I had a sort of connection.” Family life exacted another transformative influence as well: his older brother Michael’s psychosis made him feel that “a magical and malignant world was closing in about him,” perhaps giving a hint of what led the author to explore the depths of psychosis in his later professional life. It explains all of his different scientific obsessions he had as a boy, and how he came about finding all the information he did on them. Uncle Tungsten Memories Of A Chemical Boyhood (Book) : Sacks, Oliver W. : From his earliest days, Oliver Sacks, the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time, was irresistibly drawn to understanding the natural world. 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