Irvin Sol Cohen (1917 – February 14, 1955) was an American mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked on local rings.
In his thesis he proved the Cohen structure theorem for complete Noetherian local rings.
Cohen died unexpectedly in 1955 one week after having visited Zariski in Cambridge, apparently from suicide.
Many years later Zariski said of his death:[1] Many things are necessary to make a good scientist, a creative man, and left on his own Cohen found himself unproductive.
He became increasingly involved with abstract algebra until he found himself at a certain point without ground under his feet.