Judith Love Cohen

Judith Love Cohen (August 16, 1933 – July 25, 2016) was an American aerospace engineer. Cohen worked as an electrical engineer on the Minuteman missile, the science ground station for the Hubble Space Telescope, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, and the Apollo Space Program. After her retirement as an engineer, she founded a children's multimedia publishing company, eventually publishing more than 20 titles before her death in 2016. Cohen was the mother of computer scientist and engineer Neil Siegel as well as actor and musician Jack Black. Early life and education Cohen was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Sarah Cohen (née Roisman) and Morris Bernard Cohen. By fifth grade, her classmates were paying her to do their math homework. She was often the only girl in her math classes, and decided she wanted to become a math teacher. By age 19, she was studying engineering in college, and dancing ballet in the Metropolitan Opera Ballet company in New York. She received a scholarship to Brooklyn College to major in math, but realized she preferred engineering. After two years at Brooklyn College, Cohen married and moved to California, working as a junior engineer for North American Aviation, attending the University of Southern California (USC) at night; she said that she went through both her BS and MS programs at USC without ever meeting another female engineering student. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees from USC Viterbi School of Engineering, in 1957 and 1962 respectively, and continued her association with the university, serving as an Astronautical Engineering Advisory board member. In 1982, she became a graduate of the UCLA Engineering Executive Program.