COHEN, STANLEY

COHEN, STANLEY (1922– ), U.S. biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate. Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York. After studying at Brooklyn College (B.A., 1943) and Oberlin College (M.A., 1945), he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Michigan in 1948. From then until 1952 he worked at the University of Colorado. Cohen then proceeded to Washington University in St. Louis in 1952 where he was a fellow of the American Cancer Society. There he worked with Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini\>\> and they isolated the protein which is recognized as the nerve growth factor (NGF). In 1959 Cohen moved to Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor of biochemistry, where he discovered epidermal growth factor (EGF), which oversees cell development in the skin. In 1986 he shared the Nobel Prize with Levi-Montalcini for physiology and medicine for having "opened new fields of widespread importance to basic science with these discoveries." Cohen remained at Washington University until 1967 when he became a professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University. He was an American Cancer Society research professor in 1976 and in 1986 a distinguished professor. He was a member of the National Academy of Science. He and Dr. Levi-Montalcini were also the co-recipients of the 1986 Lasker Award. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Le Prix Nobel. COHEN, STANLEY N. COHEN, STANLEY N. (1935– ), U.S. geneticist. Cohen was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in biology and as an M.D. from the Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1960). After research training at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, he joined the faculty of Stanford University (1968), where his appointments included chairman of the Department of Genetics and then professor of genetics and medicine and director of the S.N. Cohen Laboratory. His early research dealt with the ability of plasmids to alter the properties of the bacteria they colonize, a subject of fundamental importance to the development of antibiotic resistance. His pioneering research interests involved isolating, cloning, and propagating mammalian genes in other species, including bacteria (also known as recombinant technology). This work laid the foundation for biotechnological techniques enabling the production of large quantities of pure proteins for diagnostic and medicinal purposes. His many honors include the Lasker Award (1980), the Wolf Prize (1981), the Albany Medical Center Prize (2004), election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Medals in both Science and Technology. (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)