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InterViews
Joel Cohen
applied mathematics/population biology
(recorded in 2003)
 Listen to the Interview (mp3, 53mb)
(56 minutes)
 At age 14 Joel Cohen knew he wanted to be a mathematical biologist. Not only was it an interesting choice of career for such a young man, the field didn’t even exist yet. Cohen fuses his backgrounds in applied mathematics and public health to study the nature and effects of populations. Cohen’s research spans a wide array of topics, from food webs to infectious diseases to human population growth, all of which makes use of mathematical tools. After earning his B.A. from Harvard in applied mathematics, he earned a fellowship to study populations of different species around the world. He then earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 1970 and a Ph.D. in population sciences and tropical public health in 1973, both from Harvard. Cohen is currently the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at the Rockefeller University in New York City. He is also a professor of populations at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and is head of the Laboratory of Populations at Columbia and Rockefeller Universities.
Listen to the Interview using RealPlayer(requires free RealPlayer software):
TRACK 1: "Mathematics is Like a Microscope"
Even as a teenager, Cohen was fascinated by mathematics and biology. He encountered trouble convincing his undergraduate advisors at Harvard that mathematical biology actually existed; instead of giving up, he continued pursuing both fields independently. After studying economics and ecology, Cohen began patterning models for species abundance distribution on economic models of market competition, and vice versa. This research turned into his senior undergraduate thesis, which was then published by Harvard University Press. (11 minutes)
TRACK 2: All Around the World
Chagas’ disease is an infectious illness that affects 20 million people in Latin America every year. There is no vaccine or drug that adequately kills the parasitic infection that invades the body’s tissues. Cohen became interested in studying the disease while in South America and seeing firsthand how it affected the population. While he was planning to attend medical school after his travels, he decided to focus on public health in order to help prevent diseases before they start. (8 minutes)
TRACK 3: Mosquitos and Monkeys
Cohen discusses his research on malaria, as well as informal social groups of people and primates. He also talks about the role of collaboration in research, which is much more common today than when Cohen first began his career. (11 minutes)
TRACK 4: Science, Policy, and Legislation
The inability to predict social values and cultural tastes has proven to be problematic in making projections. Cohen explains his work mapping the populations affected by asbestos, and why no one planned for the amount of litigation that has resulted. This is an example, he says, of the disjunction of policy and law and science. The new technology is approved before safety or possible purposes are fully known, or conversely, the new science is made available without proper explanation so it becomes something the public and legislators fear instead of embracing it. (10 minutes)
TRACK 5: The Blind Men and the Elephant
For the past thirty years, Cohen has been investigating food webs, which are the expanded versions of the basic food chains. While still in college, he began wondering if one could examine all of the food chains at once, in a food web, if patterns of species would emerge. His first book on the topic came out in 1978, and at the time of this interview, he was working on a new manuscript. (8 minutes)
TRACK 6: Beauty in Unlikely Places
Research on food webs is beginning to show that the amount of living things is the same no matter what the size of the organism; the density all along the food web is similar. Cohen relates the patterns of which mathematics and science explore, to music, poetry and even humor. He also discusses the increasingly collaborative work and encouragement of creative and quantitative methods of combining mathematics and science. (8 minutes)
Last Updated: 06-08-2009
The audio files linked above are part of the National Academy of Sciences InterViews series. Opinions and statements included in these audio files are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences.
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