Melvin Cohn (1922-2018)

American biochemist, microbiologist and immunologist, born on March 28, 1922 in New York. He was the grandson of Russian emigrants. His parent both graduated from Brooklyn Law School ; his mother was one of New York's first female lawyers ; his father was a pianist.
1940 Earned his bachelor's degree (B.S.) in physics from the City College of New York.
1941 Earned his master's degree (M.A.) in colloid chemistry from Columbia University, New York ; keratin was one the protein studied.
1942-1946 With the outbreak of World War II, M. Cohn was drafted into the US Army and served in the Pacific Theater of Operation ; entered biological research as a member of the Army's 26th Medical Company ; met Alwin M. Pappenheimer and Lane Barksdale ; later, was tasked with studying the effects of radiation on the population of Hiroshima following Japan's capitulation.
1946-1949 Resumed studies in order to earn his Ph.D. in chemistry, immunoglobulin biochemistry and other complex mixtures at New York University, under the direction of A. M. Pappenheimer ; by June 1949, he completed his Ph.D., dealing with the diphteria toxin-antitoxin reaction.
1949-1955 Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institut Pasteur in Paris (France) in the laboratory of microbial physiology directed by André Lwoff, as a research fellow from the American National Research Council ; with Jacques Monod, did pioneering work that established that induction of an enzyme involved de novo protein synthesis, and this launched beta-galactosidase as the first model system to study the mechanism of gene regulation.
1955-1958 Back to the USA, was appointed as Professor of Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri.
1956 Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology.
1959-1961 Appointed as Professor of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California.
1961-1963 As a research fellow from the National Science Foundation, traveled once again to the Institut Pasteur in Paris, in the laboratory of cellular biochemistry directed by future (1965) Nobel laureate Jacques Monod ; contributed to seminal research on gene regulation, describing the E. coli lac operon ; developed a family of compounds that made possible the analysis of induction, the identification of other components of the genetic locus and the improvement of the isolation processes of bacterial mutants, a critical component of these studies.
1962-2011 Back to the United States, M. Cohn, as Founding and Resident Fellow, together with his future wife and Fellow Researcher Suzanne Bourgeois-Cohn, joined the newly created Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, at the personal request of Jonas Salk (discoverer of the first effective polio vaccine, 1955) ; there, he founded and directed the Developmental Biology Laboratory, which focused on the problem of antibody synthesis, ranging from structural studies of antibodies to the physiology of their expression ; established a murine myeloma library that contained lines that could be manipulated in tissue culture ; with this library, M. Cohn and coll. were able to prove the somatic hypermutation model of antibody synthesis.
1963 Married biologist Suzanne Bourgeois.
1964 Held a faculty appointment with neighboring UC San Diego for more than 30 years.
1965-1970 Scientific Advisor to CSIRO, Delhi, India.
1966-1967 Member of National Science Foundation Advisory Panel on Molecular Biology, 1966-1967.
1966-1968 Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Molecular Biology.
1972-1983 Head of theCell Distribution Center, a facility that provided immune-related cell lines to the scientific community.
1980 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1982 Jacques Monod Lecturer at the Institut Pasteur in Paris ; Visiting Professor at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Dept. of Molecular Biology, Paris, France.
1983 Nominated Professor at the College de France, Paris, France.
1992-2018 After closing his laboratory in 1992, M. Cohn established the Conceptual Immunology Group dedicated to theoretical investigation, which included computer simulation of several aspects of immune behavior (theory of the self-nonself discrimination, haplotype exclusion, etc).
1995 Sandoz Prize in Basic Immunology.
2008-2011 Advisor Microsoft Computing Center, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.
2011-2018 Nominated Professor emeritus at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California ; M. Cohn maintained an active research group until shortly before his passing ; his last work concerned neurobiology and aspects of autoimmunity and immune responses to cancer ; published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and gave numerous lectures around the world.
23/10/2018 Passed away in San Diego, California.
Collaborators : G. Attardi, P. Bretscher, S. Bourgeois-Cohn, G. Stanier Cohen-Bazire, J.L. Collins, H.F. Deutsch, R. Epstein, François Jacob, W. Geckeler, G.J. Giotta, J.W. Hirst, D. S. Hogness, K. Horibata, Adam Képès, R.E. Langman, Ed. Lennox, J. Monod, J. C. Nichol, L. Orgel, A. Pappenheimer, P.Q. Patek, D. Perrin, M. R. Pollock, D. Schubert, A. Sher, M. Simonsen, S. Spiegelman, W.B. Stallcup, Roger Stanier, A.-M. Torriani, J. Watson, M.G. Weigert, L.R. Wetter, H. Wiesmeyer.
Biographical reference tools :
- Foreign Intern File, Archive funds J. Monod (MON.Ser).
-Genesis of the Salk Institute, the epic of its founders, by Suzanne Bourgeois, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles (USA), London (Great Britain), 2013.
- Notice on line : https://www.salk.edu/scientist/melvin-cohn

CeRIS' Archives Division (Institut Pasteur)