Edwin Joseph Cohn

Edwin Joseph Cohn ( born December 17, 1892 in New York City; † October 1, 1953 in Boston ) was an American biochemist. He is known especially for the development of plasma fractionation.

Life and work

Cohn initially attended Amherst College. Through the influence of Jacques Loeb, he moved to the University of Chicago, where he studied with Julius Stieglitz and Robert Andrews Millikan. Cohn earned a bachelor's degree in 1914 and 1917 with Frank R. Lillie and Lawrence J. Henderson a Ph.D. with a thesis on the physiology of spermatozoa. Then Cohn worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Thomas Burr Osborne. As of 1919, Cohn worked with blood and plasma proteins and discovered the main fractions of the blood plasma ( fibrinogen, immunoglobulins, albumin, and more ). Research trips led him to Søren Sørensen to Copenhagen to Svante Arrhenius in Sweden and William Bate Hardy and Joseph Barcroft to the University of Cambridge. 1920 Cohn went to Henderson to the newly established Department of Physical Chemistry, Harvard Medical School, whose management Cohn took over later. Here he dealt with the solubility, shape, size and electrical charge of proteins. In addition, he succeeded in that substance (identified as vitamin B12 later) to clean from liver extracts, with pernicious anemia could be treated. Other works focus on the physicochemical properties of peptides and amino acids.

During the Second World War Cohn led a group of chemists, physicists and physicians, the methods developed to separate large-scale protein components of Bluplasmas ( plasma fractionation ) and thus to treat soldiers: albumin was used against hemorrhagic shock, gamma globulins for passive immunization against measles or jaundice and fibrin in neurosurgery.

1949 Cohen was awarded a full professorship at Harvard Medical School.

Cohn was married from 1917 to Marianne Brettauer. The couple had two sons. After the death of Marianne Cohn married Edwin Cohn 1948 Rebekah Higginson.

Awards (selection)

Further Reading

• John T. Edsall: Edwin Joseph Cohn 1892-1953. In: Biographical Memoir. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, 1961 ( PDF, 2.1 MB)