Mathematical trailblazer and professor emeritus Paul Joseph Cohen died March 23 of lung disease. He was 72.
Cohen determined that a fundamental math question called the continuum hypothesis could not be solved using the axioms of set theory and was therefore not provable. In 1964, he won the American Mathematical Society’s Bôcher Memorial Prize for analysis, and in 1966 he won the Fields Medal, the math world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for logic. He also won the 1967 National Medal of Science and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and the National Academy of Sciences.
Survivors include his wife of 44 years, Christina; three sons, Eric, ’86, Steven, ’86, and Charles, ’96; one sister; and one brother.
