Stanley Cohen and Beverly Peppers Obits: Graduates of Madison HS and Brooklyn College

I learn so much from reading obits. And Boy Madison HS has some grads - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), Carole King, Andrew Dice Clay, Sandra Feldman, Marty Glickman, Martin Landau, Chris Rock, Judy Sheindlin, Sonny Werblin,  and my brother-in law.

A day or two apart two obits of 97 year olds appeared in the NYT and both graduated from Madison and went to Brooklyn College. Here are excerpts but read them both especially Beverly (Stoll) Pepper.

Stanley Cohen, Nobelist, Dies at 97; Made Breakthrough on Cell Growth

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/science/stanley-cohen-dead.html

Dr. Cohen was born on Nov. 17, 1922, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn to Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father, Louis Cohen, was a tailor, his mother, Fannie (Feitel) Cohen, a homemaker.

After surviving polio in childhood, Stanley attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn. He majored in both biology and chemistry at Brooklyn College, graduating in 1943.

Beverly Pepper, Sculptor of Monumental Lightness, Dies at 97

An American artist who long worked in Italy, she created towering forms whose evanescence belied their giant scale.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/obituaries/beverly-pepper-dead.html

The daughter of Irwin and Beatrice (Hornstein) Stoll, Beverly Stoll was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 20, 1922, and grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood there. Her father sold carpet and linoleum and later fur coats; her mother took in laundry and was an activist for the N.A.A.C.P.

Beverly wanted to make art from the time she was a child. After graduating from James Madison High School in Brooklyn, she entered the Pratt Institute, in the same borough, where she studied industrial and advertising design.

Already fascinated with construction, she tried to enroll in an engineering course there but was denied: Engineering, she was told, was no fit subject for a woman.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Pratt, she worked, miserably, as an art director for New York advertising agencies. She took night classes at Brooklyn College, studying art theory with the painter Gyorgy Kepes.