Morris Cohen was a Canadian chemist working for the

National Research Council of Canada The National Research Council Canada (NRC; french: Conseil national de recherches Canada) is the primary national agency of the Government of Canada dedicated to science and technology research & development. It is the largest federal research ...

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

. He contributed to the sciences of

corrosion Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engine ...

and of

oxidation Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is the gain of electrons or a d ...

of metals.

Life and work

Morris Cohen was born in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina () is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 C ...

in 1915. He attended Brandon University in Manitoba and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1934. He received his PhD on the topic of "Absorption Measurements by Direct Weighing" from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1939. After working as a chemist at a battery manufacturing plant, he became an employee of the National Research Council of Canada in 1943. Beginning in 1946, he was head of the corrosion section. Cohen also worked as visiting researcher the corrosion laboratory of Ulick R. Evans in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

. During the long period as active researcher from the mid 1940s to 1980, Cohen published more than 100 papers. 57 of them are presently indexed in the

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

database; his present Scopus

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

is 30. His research covers corrosion, e.g. of

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...

, high temperature oxidation, e.g. of iron or

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

, and corrosion inhibition. Cohen received the Willis Rodney Whitney Award, the Western's world's top award for outstanding scientific achievement in the field of corrosion, in 1960. In 1973, Cohen received the Outstanding Achievement Award (the later H. H. Uhlig Award) of the Corrosion Division of The

Electrochemical Society The Electrochemical Society is a learned society (professional association) based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of electrochemistry and solid-state science and related technology. The Society membership compris ...

. 1983, he was awarded the

Olin Palladium Award The Olin Palladium Award (formerly the Palladium Medal Award) was established by The Electrochemical Society (ECS) in 1950 and is presented every 2 years to recognize outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of all types of electro ...

of the

. In 1991, the Corrosion Division of the Electrochemical Society established the “Corrosion Division Morris Cohen Graduate Student Award” in honor of his scientific contributions. Prof. Norio Sato, who became a corrosion scientist in Japan, worked with Cohen from 1961 to 1962.

References

{{reflist People from Wimbledon, London People educated at Marlborough College Alumni of King's College, Cambridge