Cohen was born in 1925 in
Kolkata, India. She later migrated to the United States and studied medicine at the
University of Buffalo, graduating in 1950. She completed her residency in
pediatrics at the
Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. She moved to
Michigan in 1953 to join the
Children's Hospital of Michigan. There, she began research in the field of pediatric and
neonatal immunology. She set up the hospital's
clinical immunology laboratory and its service for clinical immunology and
rheumatology; she directed both departments until her retirement in 1992. She was also a professor at the
Wayne State University School of Medicine. In 1972, Cohen was the co-author of a landmark study that was the first to demonstrate a biochemical basis for
severe combined immunodeficiency. She continued to study
immunodeficiency disorders. With the outbreak of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, she started an HIV clinic at the Children's Hospital of Michigan in 1985. She was also involved in clinical trials for the
perinatal transmission of HIV. In 1975, Cohen became the first person in Michigan to successfully perform a
bone marrow transplant in a child. She was also the first person to
fluoresce red blood cells. She was inducted into the
Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1994 for her achievements in medicine and science. Cohen died in 2004. ==See also==