Lasting Memories

Paul Joseph Cohen
April 2, 1934-March 23, 2007
Stanford, California

Paul Joseph Cohen, Stanford University professor emeritus of mathematics, died March 23, 2007, at Stanford Hospital of a rare lung disease. He was 72.

Cohen won two of the most prestigious prizes in mathematics, in different fields. He won the American Mathematical Society's Bocher Prize in 1964 for analysis and the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics, in 1966 for logic.

"Paul Cohen was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century," said Peter Sarnak, a Princeton University math professor who studied under Cohen while earning his doctorate at Stanford in 1980. "Like many great mathematicians, his mathematical interests were very broad, ranging from mathematical analysis and differential equations to mathematical logic and number theory."

A conference was held at Stanford in September of 2006 to honor Cohen's 72nd birthday, drawing together mathematicians who were experts in different areas. Sarnak said the participants "normally would not find themselves listening to the same set of lectures."

Cohen was born April 2, 1934, in Long Branch, N.J., to Jewish immigrants from Poland. He was the youngest of four children and just 9 years old when an older sister checked out a book on calculus for him from a local library. The librarian told his sister than not even some college professors understood calculus.

Cohen grew up in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College for three years. He left before earning his bachelor's degree because he learned that he could pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago with just two years of college studies. He received a master's degree from Chicago in 1954 and a doctorate in 1958.

While a graduate student, he also taught at the University of Rochester and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a fellow at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced study in 1959-61 and then joined Stanford's faculty in 1961.

"Cohen was a dynamic and enthusiastic lecturer and teacher," Sarnak said. "He made mathematics look simple and unified."

Cohen played piano and violin and sang in a Stanford chorus.

He is survived by his wife, Christina Cohen of Stanford; sister, Tobel Cosiol of San Jose, Costa Rica; brother, Ruby Cassel of Brooklyn; twin sons, Eric and Steven Cohen of Los Angeles; and son, Charles Cohen of Boston.