Stanley Cohen, a Brooklyn College alumnus turned Nobelist, died on Feb. 5, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 17, 1922. He was the son of a homemaker and a tailor. Both of his parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia who taught him the values of intellectual achievement. Cohen was a polio survivor.
Cohen attended Brooklyn College from 1939 to 1943. He double majored in biology and chemistry, earning his B.A. in 1943. After he graduated, he worked at a milk plant. Cohen also applied to a Master’s program at Oberlin College, where he graduated with an M.A. in zoology in 1945. In 1948, he earned his doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Michigan. In 1956, Cohen joined the Vanderbilt faculty as an assistant professor of biochemistry.
In 1986, Cohen (alongside Rita Levi-Montalcini) won a Nobel Prize for discovering the epidermal growth factor and its receptor. He is one of only thirteen CUNY graduates to win the Nobel Prize, and the only one of the bunch to attend Brooklyn College.
Cohen also won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award and the President’s National Medal of Science. He was inducted into the Tennessee Healthcare Hall of Fame in 2016.
Cohen left behind his wife, Jan Jordan, as well as three children, and two granddaughters. He was 97.