Paul Cohen

Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician best known for his proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the most widely accepted axiomatization of set theory. Paul J. Cohen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey into a Jewish family. He graduated in 1950 from Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He then studied at Brooklyn College from 195... more

Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician best known for his proof of the independence of the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the most widely accepted axiomatization of set theory. Paul J. Cohen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey into a Jewish family. He graduated in 1950 from Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He then studied at Brooklyn College from 1950 to 1953 but left before receiving a bachelor's degree when he learned he could pursue graduate studies in Chicago with just two years of college. At the University of Chicago, he received his master's degree in 1954 and his PhD in 1958 under supervision of Antoni Zygmund. His doctoral thesis was Topics in the Theory of Uniqueness of Trigonometric Series. He is noted for inventing a technique called forcing which he used to show that neither the continuum hypothesis (CH) nor the axiom of choice can be proved from the standard Zermelo-Fraenkel... less