COHEN, I. BERNARD

COHEN, I. BERNARD (1914–2003), U.S. historian of science. Cohen was born in Far Rockaway, New York. He was an expert on Benjamin Franklin and Sir Isaac Newton. Most of his professional life was spent at Harvard University, where in 1937 he received his B.Sc. in mathematics, subsequently becoming the first American to receive a Ph.D. in the history of science (1947). He transformed Harvard's undergraduate and postgraduate program on the history of science into a department and in 1977 became Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Science. After retiring in 1984, Cohen continued to teach at Harvard, Brandeis University, and Boston College. The fruits of his polymath skills included Science and the Founding Fathers (1995), which deals with the contribution of scientific thought to the authors of the American Constitution, and the first English translation of Newton's Principia Mathematica (with Koyre and Whitman) since 1729 (1999). He served as president of the most influential national and international organizations concerned with the history of science and was accorded the discipline's most prestigious honors. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)