Mildred Cohn, a renowned chemist who battled sexual discrimination for much of her career, died last month (October 12) at age 96, succumbing to pneumonia at a hospital in Philadelphia. Combining chemistry, biology, and physics, Cohn opened up new avenues for interdisciplinary biology and helped found the emerging fields of biochemistry and biophysics.
Image: Erica P. Johnson
"Mildred was a pioneer in many ways," linkurl:Joshua Wand;http://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g275/p1309 of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a former student of Cohn's, wrote in an email to The Scientist. "She surmounted great structural barriers (for women) and was essentially forced to work outside jobs to pay for equipment and chemicals during her PhD." Cohn's research spanned from isotopes to ATP to oxidative phosphorylation. She was one of the first to take meaningful pictures of proteins using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), Wand said, and applied this technique to a variety of biochemical problems,...
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