Theodore Cohen (May 11, 1929 – December 13, 2017) was an American organic chemist and chemistry professor at University of Pittsburgh.

[6] Cohen was born in Boston, the son of a furrier from England, and was the first in his family with a college education.

[1][2] He was guided towards science instead of medicine in a chance encounter with Isaac Asimov while working a summer job as a waiter,[3] and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in 1955,[1][2] helping to support his graduate studies by working as an extra in the movies of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

[3] His doctoral research, supervised by Jerome A. Berson, concerned the synthesis of alkaloids found in ipecac, and the chemical properties of pyridines.

Observing the romance, Asimov wrote songs about it for the camp show, "Poor Ted's in bed.