Waldo Cohn
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Waldo Cohn | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Cohn in 1947 | |
| Born | 28 June 1910 San Francisco, California, US |
| Died | 27 August 1999 (aged 89) Oak Ridge, Tennessee, US |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Separation of uranium isotopes for the Manhattan Project; desegregation of schools; founding the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra |
| Spouse | Charmian Edlin Cohn |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry |
| Institutions | Harvard Medical School, Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| Doctoral advisor | D. M. Greenberg |
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Waldo E. Cohn (1910–1999) was an American biochemist known principally for developing techniques for separation of isotopes necessary for the Manhattan Project.[1]
He was born in San Francisco, California, on 28 June 1910,[1] and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked under the supervision of D. M. Greenberg, and received his Ph.D. on the basis of a thesis on radioactive phosphorus (32P) produced in the cyclotron and its effects in rats, work later published with Greenberg.[2] In the period 1939–1942 he carried out post-doctoral research in the Harvard Medical School, where he worked on determination of haemoglobin in tissue extracts.[3]
Career at Oak Ridge
From 1942 he participated in the Manhattan Project, working initially at the University of Chicago, but after 1943, and for the rest of his career, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.[1] There he introduced the use of ion-exchange chromatography for separation of isotopes needed for developing the atomic bomb.[4] On account of the secrecy attached to the Manhattan Project, Cohn published rather little during this period, but that included the start of a long-term interest in nucleic acids.[5]
Chemical and biochemical nomenclature
In his capacity as Director of NAS-NRC Office of Biochemical Nomenclature, located in Oak Ridge, Waldo Cohn worked closely with the IUPAC on chemical and biochemical nomenclature, and maintained a publicly available collection of the Recommendation of the IUPAC-IUB Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature, as noted, for example, in the document on one-letter symbols for amino acids.[6]
