Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood - Softcover

"A rare gem.... Fresh, joyous, wistful, generous, and tough-minded."-"The""New York Times Book Review""This book underlies everything else Dr. Sacks has written, "and" is worthy to stand with the great scientific memoirs, for it's passion, its insight, its sense of history and its felicity." -Paul Theroux"""Fired by Sacks's enthusiasm-obviously genuine, impossible to feign-bursting forth in all directions. . . .The book recounts the growth of a formidable young mind opening up to the order and beauty of the material world." -"Newsday""Sack's study of a mind [is] as tough as tungsten, as fluid as mercury . . . as precious as gold." -"The Seattle Times"

'If you did not think that gallium and iridium could move you, this superb book will change your mind' The Times In Uncle Tungsten Oliver Sacks evokes, with warmth and wit, his upbringing in wartime England. He tells of the large science-steeped family who fostered his early fascination with chemistry. There follow his years at boarding school where, though unhappy, he developed the intellectual curiosity that would shape his later life. And we hear of his return to London, an emotionally bereft ten-year-old who found solace in his passion for learning. Uncle Tungsten radiates all the delight and wonder of a boy's adventures, and is an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary young mind. '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 'The amalgamation of personal recollection and scientific history makes a luminous, inspiring book' Sunday Telegraph 'Uncle Tungsten is really about the raw joy of scientific understanding; what it is like to be a precocious child discovering the alchemical secrets of reality for the first time: the sheer thrill of finding intelligible patterns in nature' Guardian