P. M. Cohn (1924–2006)

P.M. (Paul Moritz) Cohn was born to a Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany. His parents were Julia Mathilde, a teacher, and Jacob Cohn, who owned a cigar import business. When the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, his mother was dismissed from her job, and his father's firm was confiscated. During the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, Jacob Cohn was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was released after four months on condition that he leave Germany. Paul, age 15, went to England in May 1939 on the Kindertransport and never saw his parents again. He was able to correspond regularly with them until late 1941. At the end of World War II, he learned that they had been deported to Riga, Latvia in December 1941 and did not survive. After working two years on a chicken farm, Cohn trained as an engineer and worked as a bench-fitter in a factory in London for 4½ years. He passed the Cambridge Scholarship Examination, and won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He received a B.A in mathematics in 1948 and a Ph.D. in 1951, under the supervision of Philip Hall. He then spent a year as a chargé de recherches (research fellow) at the Université de Nancy, France. He then became a lecturer in mathematics at Manchester University. There he met Deirdre Sonia Sharon, a psychology student; the couple married in 1958 and had two daughters. Cohn was a visiting professor at Yale University in 1961–1962, and spent part of 1962 at the University of California, Berkeley. On his return to the UK, he became Reader at Queen Mary College, University of London. He was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1964 and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1967. That year, he became head of the Department of Mathematics at Bedford College. By then, he was regarded as one of the world's leading algebraists. He worked in many areas of algebra, published numerous scholarly papers beginning in 1952, and wrote books, including undergraduate textbooks. In 1986, he was appointed Astor Professor of Mathematics at University College London. He retired in 1989. Cohn was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1980 and received many honors for his outstanding contribution to mathematics.