Barbara Cooper

Barbara Hope Cooper (September 1, 1953 – August 7, 1999) was an American physicist. She was the first female professor on the physics faculty at Cornell University.

Early life and education Cooper was born in Lancaster in 1953. She was raised in Newark. She attended Newark High School and graduated in 1971. Her father, Charles Burleigh Cooper, was an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Delaware. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1976 at Cornell University. When she started at Cornell, she intended to apply to medical school. When she injured her back in her second year, she took a break from her studies to recover and was hired to work on an undergraduate research project at the Cornell Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. She became more interested in physics.

Career Cooper stayed at Caltech until 1983 for a postdoctoral fellowship, then she was hired by Cornell University as an assistant professor. Faculty development awards from IBM and AT&T.

Personal life Cooper was married to physicist Christopher Robert Myers. They had a daughter who was eight at the time of Cooper's death. Cooper died in 1999 six months after being diagnosed with lung cancer at Cayuga Medical Center.