chemistry

Sydney Cohen

Sydney Cohen is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sydney Cohen rather than just read about it. In short: Sydney Cohen (18 September 1921 – 25 July 2017) was Professor of Chemical Pathology, Guy's Hospital Medical School, and an authority on malaria. Biography Sydney Cohen was born on 18 September 1921 in Johannesburg to Pauline (née Soloveychik) and Morris Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania.

Key takeaways

Sydney Cohen belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sydney Cohen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sydney Cohen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sydney Cohen (18 September 1921 – 25 July 2017) was Professor of Chemical Pathology, Guy's Hospital Medical School, and an authority on malaria.

Biography Sydney Cohen was born on 18 September 1921 in Johannesburg to Pauline (née Soloveychik) and Morris Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. He was educated at King Edward VII School, Johannesburg, and at Witwatersrand University, graduating MB BCh in 1944. In 1945 he sailed to the UK and worked at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, treating the war injured. He travelled back and forth to South Africa for the next decade, gaining his MD at Wits in 1954. That same year he left South Africa to join the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, where “in a very productive six-year period he carried out basic studies on the metabolism of plasma proteins in rabbits, baboons and humans.” Cohen gained his PhD from the University of London, in 1959. He moved to St Mary's Hospital Medical School in 1960, where he was Reader in the Department of Immunology. From 1965 until his retirement in 1986, he was Professor of Chemical Pathology at Guy’s Hospital Medical School. The Royal Society's biography of Professor Cohen notes that:

Perhaps of greatest significance was his work with malaria. Sydney (with Ian McGregor) showed for the first time, that immunity could be passively transferred with immune IgG. An in vitro assay was devised for analysing the mechanism of malaria immunity and the variant specificity of protective antibody was demonstrated. This provided a means of isolating malarial antigens and free merozoites and for analysing the basis of host specificity. A practical method has resulted for screening antimalarial drugs.

Other positions held He was a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) and chairman of its Tropical Medicine Research Board, 1974–76. He helped to form the Royal College of Pathologists in 1964. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and appointed a CBE in 1978.

Family In 1950 he married June Bernice Adler, a magistrate whom he met at a tennis party at her grandfather’s house in Johannesburg. June died in London in 1999, aged 69. That year he married Deirdre Maureen Ann Boyd, who had assisted him at Guy’s, and later they moved to St Andrews, on Scotland’s east coast, where he was a member of the Royal and Ancient golf club; they lived four minutes' walk away. He died in July 2017 at the age of 95. His son, Roger Cohen, born in London in 1955, is a columnist for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sydney Cohen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sydney Cohen claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sydney Cohen before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sydney Cohen ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sydney Cohen

In research: Sydney Cohen appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sydney Cohen in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sydney Cohen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1921 births, 2017 deaths, Alumni of King Edward VII School (Johannesburg), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sydney Cohen outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sydney Cohen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sydney Cohen means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sydney Cohen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sydney Cohen in simple terms?

Sydney Cohen (18 September 1921 – 25 July 2017) was Professor of Chemical Pathology, Guy's Hospital Medical School, and an authority on malaria. Biography Sydney Cohen was born on 18 September 1921 in Johannesburg to Pauline (née Soloveychik) and Morris Cohen, Jewish immigrants from Lithuania.

Why does Sydney Cohen matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sydney Cohen?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sydney Cohen.