Carolyn Cohen

Carolyn Cohen (June 18, 1929 – December 20, 2017) was an American biologist and biophysicist. She was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Early life and education Carolyn Cohen was born June 18, 1929, to parents Anna and Philip Cohen. After Cohen's father died in 1939, she credited his lawyer Samuel Sumner Goldberg for mentoring her and nurturing her curiosity. After rejections from McGill University and Barnard College, Cohen's French teacher urged her to apply to Bryn Mawr College, where she was accepted with a full-tuition scholarship. She then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for a PhD under the supervision of Richard S. Bear. There she worked on the structure of collagen and other helically structured proteins, completing her degree in 1954.

While at MIT, Cohen met then-visiting researcher Jean Hanson, who was working on the structure of muscle fibers. After graduation Cohen took a postdoctoral researcher position in Hanson's laboratory at King's College London, working on the X-ray crystallography structure of actin filaments.

Cohen retired from Brandeis in 2012.

In honor of her work surrounding protein structures, in 2022 the Biophysical Society Innovation Award was renamed to the Carolyn Cohen Award for Biophysical Innovation. It has since been presented every year at the BPS Annual Meeting in February.

Awards and honors Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Member, National Academy of Sciences 2000, Biophysical Society Founder's Award for her accomplishments in Biophysics