Gene D. Cohen Papers

Background on Gene D. Cohen

A pioneer in geriatric psychiatry with a polymathic imagination, Gene D. Cohen was born on September 28, 1944 in Brockton, Massachusetts, where his father ran a hardware store. He graduated cum laude from Harvard with a degree in art history in 1966, received a medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1970, and then earned a PhD in Gerontology at the Union Institute in 1981. Cohen began his career with the U.S. Public Health Service out of medical school. From the outset, he set a novel course in his research, becoming one of the first psychiatrists to specialize in the study of the impact of aging on the brain and Alzheimer’s disease. Recognized for administrative process as well as the originality of his scholarship, he was selected as the first chief of the Center on Aging at the National Institute of Mental Health (1975-1988) and went on to leadership positions at the National Institute on Aging at NIH. In 1994, he left government employment to found the Center on Aging, Health, and Humanities at George Washington University.

Cohen was the founding editor of two journals, The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and International Psychogeriatrics. He additionally was president of the Gerontological Society of America from 1996-1997 and served as Chairman of the Clinical Medicine section. Other positions included those of Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown and Chairman of the Council on Aging of the American Psychiatric Association. In addition to founding the center, Dr. Cohen served as founding director of the Washington, D.C. Center on Aging, a think tank. He was elected to the Board of Directors of The American Geriatrics Society and served as Chairman of the Committee on Aging of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry.

The impact of Cohen’s research was felt widely and catalyzed a change in the field from viewing aging as a disease to recognizing the creative potential of the older mind. His demonstration of the health benefits to older people of engagement in the arts made him one of the intellectual architects of the field of Creative Aging. He was the project director for a study, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, which assessed the impact on older people of cultural programs provided by professional artists. Cohen was a dedicated advocate to the concept that the elderly are capable of functioning at high levels of creativity and intellectual thought. When Cohen’s career began, he argued against the medical profession largely treated aging like a disease. With evidence from Cohen’s research, he argued that the brain would continue creating new cells at any age so long as it was engaged in new and challenging intellectual activities.

The author of more than 150 articles and monographs, he earned numerous awards for his work, including the highest award bestowed by the U.S. Public Health Service, the Distinguished Service Medal. Both as a researcher and as a spokesman for research in gerontology — he was often a guest on television news programs and made a series of public service messages with the comedian George Burns — he was instrumental in bringing information about aging to the public. Cohen died of metastatic prostate cancer at the age of 65 in Nov. 2009, leaving his wife, Wendy Miller, two children, and four grandchildren.