奥利弗·萨克斯（Oliver Sacks，1933年— ），经验丰富的神经病学专家，具有诗人气质的科学家，在医学和文学领域均享有盛誉。他擅长以纪实文学的形式，充满人文关怀的笔触，将脑神经病人的临床案例，写成一个个深刻感人的故事，被书评家誉为本世纪难得一见的“神经文学家”，被《纽约时报》誉为“医学桂冠诗人”。

萨克斯得过的写作奖项包括霍桑登奖和乔治-波克奖，也是古根汉学术奖获得者，常年为《纽约客》、《纽约时报书评周刊》的专栏供稿。他是美国艺术和文学学会的会员。

"Oliver Sacks has become the world's best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness". ("Guardian"). In his most extraordinary book, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. These are case studies of people who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people or common objects; whose limbs have become alien; and, who are afflicted and yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr Sacks' splendid and sympathetic telling, each tale is a unique and deeply human study of life struggling against incredible adversity. "Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction ...Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be". ("Sunday Times"). "This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it". ("The Times"). "A gripping journey into the recesses of the human mind". ("Daily Mail").