She was a professor of Comparative Drama at the University of California, Davis for thirty years.
Born in 1922 in Columbus, Ohio, Ruby Burman moved with her family to New York City, where she completed high school and graduated from Hunter College.
After the war she returned to Europe and completed a doctoral degree at the University of Paris.
[1][2] Cohn joined the Language Arts faculty of San Francisco State University in 1961 and taught until her resignation during the student strike of 1968.
Through her scholarship she became friends with Beckett, exchanging letters and visiting each other at least annually until his death in 1989.