Stanley Cohen(1922 — 2020)

When Stanley Cohen joined Rita Levi-Montalcini's laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, they formed an unlikely duo: she, an Italian neurobiologist, he, an American biochemist. She said of him that he had “golden hands” for purifying proteins, and their collaboration would become one of the most famous in 20th-century biology.

To isolate epidermal growth factor (EGF), Cohen used an unexpected source: the salivary glands of male mice, which are particularly rich in this protein. He had noticed that injecting extracts from these glands made baby mice open their eyes and cut their teeth earlier than normal.

Cohen and Levi-Montalcini received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986, more than thirty years after their discoveries in the 1950s. The Nobel committee honored their identification of growth factors, molecules that revolutionized the understanding of cellular development and, later, cancer research.

Cohen's work on EGF had major medical repercussions that he had not anticipated: understanding how cells receive growth signals made it possible to develop anticancer therapies targeting these receptors, such as certain treatments for breast or lung cancer.

Discreet and devoted to his bench work, Cohen continued to teach and frequent his laboratory at Vanderbilt University long after his Nobel Prize. He played the clarinet and the recorder, and remained committed to fundamental research rather than fame.