Cohen enrolled in the City College (now City U) of New York at the age of fifteen. After work in intelligence in the Second World War, he gained a PhD in clinical psychology at New York U, where he spent most of his teaching career. He was a co-author of a popular introductory statistics book for the behavioural sciences, first published in 1971.

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1673781 Fuller biography and photograph.