Jack Cohen (scientist)

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Jack Cohen is a reproductive biologist at the University of Warwick, England. Cohen has worked as a consultant for both science fiction television shows and science fiction novelists on how to construct plausible aliens. His collaborators and associated works include Anne McCaffrey for the Dragonriders of Pern; the Legacy of Heorot collaboration of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes; and several works by Terry Pratchett and David Gerrold.

He has also collaborated with fellow University of Warwick researcher Ian Stewart to write deep books on epistemology, and the science of the Discworld.

Jack Cohen is a member of the high IQ society Mensa. He was one of the small group of British Mensans who persuaded science fiction author Isaac Asimov to visit the United Kingdom in June 1974.[1]

For his many services to the series The X-Files, he was affectionately lampooned in the series in the form of UFO author Jose Chung.

In 1999 Terry Pratchett made both Jack and Professor Ian Stewart "Honorary Wizards of the Unseen University" at the same ceremony at which the University of Warwick gave Terry Pratchett an honorary degree.

His hobbies, according to profiles in the front of his books, include boomerang-throwing and keeping strange animals.

[edit] Books

[edit] Select Quotations

  • From What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life
"[S]cience is the best defense against believing what we want to." (Cohen himself actually gives credit for this quote to his co-author, Stewart).

[edit] External links