Mildred Cohn

Mildred Cohn (12 July 1913 to 12 October 2009) was an American biochemist who furthered understanding of biochemical processes through her study of chemical reactions within animal cells. She was a pioneer in using nuclear magnetic resonance to study enzyme reactions, particularly reactions of adenosine triphosphate. She received the National Medal of Science in 1982, the nation's highest science award, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Cohn was born in the Bronx in 1913 to Jewish parents who had left Russia for the United States around 1907; her father was a rabbi, and when she was 13 the family moved to a Yiddish-speaking cooperative that strongly emphasized education. She held a research position in the laboratory of Vincent du Vigneaud at the George Washington University Medical School, where she did postdoctoral work on sulfur amino acid metabolism with radioactive sulfur isotopes, and later worked with Carl and Gerty Cori in their biochemistry laboratory in the school of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.