SIPA: School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

SIPA Faculty

Joel E. Cohen
Hogan Hall, 2010 Broadway
Professor of Earth and Environmental Science
Phone: 212-327-8883
jec52@columbia.edu

Biography:
Joel E. Cohen is a professor of populations in the School of International and Public Affairs, the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. He is also the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at the Rockefeller University, New York, and he heads the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller and Columbia Universities.

Cohen's research deals with the demography, ecology, epidemiology, and social organization of human and nonhuman populations and with mathematical concepts useful in these fields. In March 1997, Cohen was the first winner of the Olivia Schieffelin Nordberg Prize for excellence in writing in the population sciences for his book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (Norton 1995). Cohen's other scientific works include A Model of Simple Competition (Harvard 1966); Casual Groups of Monkeys and Men (Harvard 1971); Food Webs and Niche Space (Princeton 1978); Community Food Webs: Data and Theory, with F. Briand and C. M. Newman (Springer-Verlag 1990); and Comparisons of Stochastic Matrices, with Applications in Information Theory, Statistics, Economics and Population Sciences, with J. H. B. Kemperman and Gheorghe Zbãganu (Birkhäuser Boston 1998). He also coedited volumes on Random Matrices and Their Applications, with H. Kesten and C. M. Newman (American Mathematical Society 1986); Mutualism and Community Organization, with H. Kawanabe and K. Iwasaki (Oxford 1993); and Plants and Population: Is There Time?, with N. V. Fedoroff (National Academy Press 1999). In all, Cohen has published more than 280 academic papers, in addition to a book of scientific and mathematical jokes, Absolute Zero Gravity, with B. Devine (Simon and Schuster 1992).

In addition to teaching, Cohen serves as a member of the National Board of Governors of the Nature Conservancy; an elected councilor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a trustee of the Black Rock Forest Preserve, New York; and as a member of the Educational Advisory Board of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, and an honorary senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, New York. In March 1999, Cohen was named cowinner of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. He gave his $100,000 share of the prize to establish scholarships for students in grades 7–12.

Cohen holds a PhD in applied mathematics and a PhD in population science and tropical public health, both from Harvard University. In addition, Cohen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989 (in evolutionary and population biology and ecology), the American Philosophical Society in 1994 (in the professions, arts, and affairs), and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1997 (in applied mathematical sciences).