Mildred Cohn

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Mildred Cohn

Born

July 12, 1913

New York City, New York, US

Died

October 12, 2009

(aged 96)

, Pennsylvania,

Education

Spouse

Children

Three

Parents

Isidore Cohn (father)

Bertha Klein Cohn (mother)

Awards

(1963)

(1975)

(1982)

Scientific career

Fields

Physical Biochemistry

Institutions

Mildred Cohn

(July 12, 1913 – October 12, 2009)

was an American

who furthered understanding of

through her

study of

within animal

. She was a pioneer in the use

for studying

, particularly

reactions of

(ATP).

She received the nation's highest science award, the

, in 1982,

and was inducted into the

Early life

[

]

Cohn's parents, childhood sweethearts Isidore Cohn and Bertha Klein Cohn,

were

. Her father was a

. They left

for the

around 1907.

Mildred Cohn was born July 12, 1913, in

, where her

family lived in an apartment.

When Mildred was 13, her father moved the family

to a

-speaking cooperative,

Heim Gesellschaft

, which strongly

emphasized education, the arts,

, and the preservation of

Yiddish culture.

Education

[

]

Cohn graduated from high school at 14.

She went on to attend

, which was both free and open to all qualified women, irrespective of

race, religion or ethnic background.

She received her Bachelor's cum laude

in 1931.

She managed to afford a single year at

, but

was ineligible for an assistantship because she was a woman.

After

receiving her

in 1932, she worked for the

for two years.

Although she had a supportive

supervisor, she was the only woman among 70 men, and was informed that she

would never be promoted.

She subsequently returned to Columbia, studying under

, who had just won the

Originally, Cohn was working to study the different

. However, her equipment failed

her, and she could not finish this project. She went on to write her dissertation on

and earned her

in 1938.

Career

[

]

External videos

, talk

given at the

in 2005.

With Urey's recommendation, Cohn was able to obtain a position as a research associate

in the laboratory of

. There Cohn conducted post-doctoral studies on

metabolism using radioactive sulfur isotopes. Cohn pioneered the use of isotopic

tracers to examine the metabolism of sulfur-containing compounds.

When du Vigneaud

moved his laboratory to

Medical College in

, Cohn and

her new husband, physicist

, moved to New York as well.

In 1946,

was offered a faculty appointment at

. Cohn was able to obtain a research position with

and

in their biochemistry laboratory in the university's school of medicine.

There, she

was able to choose her own research topics. She used nuclear magnetic resonance to

investigate the reaction of

with ATP, revealing considerable information

about the biochemistry of ATP,

including the structure of ATP,

and role of

ions in the

conversion of ATP and

When asked in later life about her most exciting moments in science, Cohn replied: "In

1958, using nuclear magnetic resonance, I saw the first three peaks of ATP. That was

exciting. [I could] distinguish the three phosphorus atoms of ATP with a spectroscopic

method, which had never been done before."

Using a stable isotope of

, Cohn

discovered how

and water are part of the

the metabolic pathway oxidative phosphorylation, the ubiquitous process used by all

to generate

energy, in the form of ATP, from nutrients.

She elucidated how the

metal ions are involved in the enzymatic

reactions of ADP and ATP by studying NMR spectra of the phosphorus

and the structural change in the presence of

various divalent ions.

In 1958, she was promoted from research associate to associate professor.

In 1960, Cohn and her husband joined the

. Mildred was appointed as an associate professor of Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry,

and became a full professor the following year.

In 1964, she became the first woman to receive the American

Heart Association's Lifetime Career Award, providing support until she reached age sixty-five.

In 1971, she was

elected to the

She was elected to the

the following

year.

In 1982, she retired from the faculty as the Benjamin Rush Professor Emerita of Physiological Chemistry.

In 1984, Cohn received the Golden Plate Award of the

In the course of her career, Mildren Cohn worked with four Nobel laureates, who received three Nobel prizes:

, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1934

and

, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1947

, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1955

Achievements

[

]

Attending the Brown Bag Lecture

in 2005

Cohn wrote 160 papers, mostly on her primary research subject of using nuclear

magnetic resonance to study ATP.

She received a number of honorary doctorates.

She won the American Chemical Society's

in 1963.

In 1968, she

was elected a Fellow of the

She was

awarded the Franklin Institute's

in 1975, for her work on nuclear magnetic resonance analysis of

enzymatic complexes. She received the International Organization of Women Biochemists Award

in 1979.

She

received Columbia University's

in 1986.

She was presented with the

by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 for 'pioneering the use of

stable isotopic tracers and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the study of the mechanisms of enzymatic

catalysis'.

During her career, Cohn achieved several gender firsts: She was the first woman to be appointed to the editorial board

of the

, where she served as editor from 1958–63 and from 1968–73. She was also the

first woman to become president of the

, then called the

American Society of Biological Chemists (serving as such from 1978 to 1979),

and the first woman career

investigator for the

In 2009, she was inducted into the

Marriage

[

]

Mildred Cohn was married to

from 1938 until his death in 1983.

They had three children,

all of whom earned doctorates.

Mildren Cohn is quoted in Elga Wasserman's book,

The Door in the Dream: Conversations

With Eminent Women in Science

, as saying “My greatest piece of luck was marrying Henry Primakoff, an excellent

scientist who treated me as an intellectual equal and always assumed that I should pursue a scientific career and

behaved accordingly.”

Partial bibliography

[

]

Cohn, Mildred; Hughes, T. R. (1960).

The Journal of Biological Chemistry

235

3250–

Cohn, Mildred; Hughes, T. R. (1962).

The Journal of Biological Chemistry

237

176–

81.

Cohn, Mildred (1953).

The Journal

of Biological Chemistry

201

(2):

735–

50.