Edwin J Cohn

A brilliant chemist dressed in a three- piece suit who saved the lives of many persons. A person who, in my view, should have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Cohn became famous for his work on the fractionation of plasma during World War II. He developed the techniques for isolating the human serum albumin fraction out of plasma. Albumin is essential for maintaining osmotic pressure in blood vessels. The infusions with purified albumin on the battlefield rescued the lives of many soldiers from shock.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, all the albumin that had been prepared in the laboratory of Edwin Cohn at the Harvard Medical School, was flown to Honolulu for the wounded naval personnel that had severe burn wounds. The albumin saved the lives of many.

It is amazing that the technology that he developed with his team is still the basis for today’s fractionation technology!
In September 1920 Cohn started at Harvard Medical School the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry. He worked with a group of 15 chemists to define he characteristics of proteins and peptides. This work all started with an annual grant of $15,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and some small funding from the university.

The project needed large numbers of blood donations that came from the Red Cross. It was not without risk!. It is known that 2 prisoners in the Norfolk County jail died of serum sickness after bovine albumin was infused. Medical students were bled until they went into shock and then their lives were saved with the infusion of human serum albumin. In today’s world there would be some interesting discussions on ethics!

After the war Cohn continued with his important work to develop multiple fractions so that everything from the valuable blood could be used. His respect for blood was memorized by an inscription on the black board in his office from the famous German poet Goethe who wrote in The Faust:” Das Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft”

From my personal experience I have seen researchers being the first human to be exposed to new substances that were a candidate for clinical use. Edwin Cohn was not different.

There are stories that he would give demonstrations of the fractionation machine and use his own blood and fractionate that on the stage during a lecture!.

There is an amazing story when Cohn demonstrated the machine in Europe. The machine became blocked and exploded. The first rows of his audience were covered with his blood. He maintained his cool and continued his lecture without interruption.
People that have known him describe Edwin J. Cohn in multiple ways: brilliant, extraordinary, cruel, compassionate, complex, workaholic, ambitious, well organized and demanding. He deserves an enormous amount of credit for what he accomplished.

Edwin J. Cohn died on October 1, 1953 at the age of 60.

Jan M Bult
October 2019