Early Life
Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a North London Jewish couple: Samuel Sacks, a physician (died June 1990), and Muriel Elsie Landau, one of the first female surgeons in England. Sacks had a large extended family, and among his first cousins are Israeli statesman Abba Eban, writer and director Jonathan Lynn, and economist Robert Aumann.
When Sacks was six years old, he and his brother Michael were evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. He attended St Paul's School in London. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, in 1958 he went on to incept as a Master of Arts (MA) and earn a BM BCh, thereby qualifying to practice medicine. He undertook residencies and fellowship work at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco and at UCLA.
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“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
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