A pioneer in using new technologies to measure organic reactions, Mildred Cohn has received many top awards in the fields of chemistry and biology. Early in her career, she surmounted prejudice against women and Jews.

Cohn was born in New York City on July 12, 1913, to Isidore and Bertha (Klein) Cohn. Her father, trained as a rabbi in Russia, became a “militant atheist” involved in the Yiddish culture movement in New York. He worked in the garment and printing industries. Mildred had a brother, Albert, two years older.

Graduating at age fourteen from public school, Cohn majored in chemistry at Barnard College, while taking all available courses in physics. She received a bachelor’s degree in 1931 and, a year later, a master’s degree in chemistry from Columbia University.

After passing a civil service exam for junior chemist, Cohn began to work at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, a predecessor of NASA. She was given a position lower than the one she qualified for and was eventually banned from the laboratory because she was a woman, but she persevered in planning fuel-injection experiments that others carried out.

Cohn eventually returned to Columbia, where, under Harold Urey, she used isotopes to study reaction mechanisms. She received her Ph.D. in 1937, but still had difficulty finding work. According to Cohn, corporations seeking employees at Columbia posted notices, “Interviewing all Ph.D. candidates, male and Christian.” Luckily, Vincent du Vigneaud hired her as a physical chemist, originally at Washington University and later at Cornell University Medical Center. She again worked on isotopes, initially measuring the deuterium content of water. Nine years passed before she could choose her own research, and twenty-one years passed before she received a university appointment.

In 1938, Cohn married physicist Henry Primakoff. She did not change her name, preferring, during World War II, to reveal her Jewish identity. The couple had three children: two daughters, Nina and Laura, who became psychotherapists, and a son, Paul, who became a scientist. Her husband died in 1983.

In 1946, she moved to Washington University, where she worked with Carl and Gerty Cori, a husband-and-wife team who allowed Cohn to pursue independent research. Among other endeavors, she analyzed enzyme-catalyzed reactions and built a mass spectrometer. In 1958, she was appointed associate professor.

In 1960, Cohn became a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, and was made full professor within a year. In 1964, she became the only woman to receive the American Heart Association’s Lifetime Career Award, which provided generous support until she turned sixty-five. In 1978, the university appointed her the Benjamin Rush professor of physiological chemistry.

Cohn was the first woman on the editorial board of the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry, where she was editor for ten years. Other honors include the American Chemical Society’s Garvan Medal, the Franklin Institute’s Cresson Medal, the International Organization of Women’s Biochemists Award, the National Medal of Science, and Columbia University’s Chandler Medal. She was president of the American Society of Biological Chemists.

Mildred Cohn started her career at a time of great innovation in physics. With her strong interest in physics, she reached new frontiers in understanding chemical reactions at the atomic level. She used innovative technologies—mass spectrometer, nuclear magnetic resonance, and electronic paramagnetic resonance—to elucidate organic reactions. Her research included metabolic studies, mechanisms of enzymatic reactions, ATP, and electron spin. Although she did not have a university appointment for two decades, she worked with scientists who were or would become Nobel laureates. Her low-profile jobs gave her not only flexibility to rear children, but also freedom for long-term projects that other scientists could not undertake, projects that eventually reaped rich rewards.

Mildred Cohn died on October 12, 2009. According to the Washington Post: "Dr. Cohn was named to the National Women's Hall of Fame one day before she died."