Dr. Arthur H. Cohen's Obituary
Dr. Arthur H. Cohen passed away on May 17, 2022, at age 80. Born May 15, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, to Reuben and Frances Cohen, the second of four boys, he was a world-renowned renal pathologist who stumbled into his career and turned it into his lifelong passion and purpose. A proud graduate of Midwood High School (1959), Brooklyn College (1963), and SUNY Buffalo Medical School (1967), Arthur married Susan Lovinger, in 1964 during his time in medical school, and they had three daughters.
After medical school in Buffalo, Arthur did a medical internship. He started his pathology residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NY and completed it in 1972 at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he remained on the faculty for 21 years. He then moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for an additional 21 years, where he was a Full Professor of Pathology and Medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine and a Professor of Pathology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, eventually earning “emeritus” status.
Arthur enjoyed a distinguished medical career as a self-taught renal pathologist. He began the renal pathology division at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and, after the move to Cedars-Sinai as Director of Renal Pathology, expanded it to one of the largest such clinical services in the US. He also served as Director of Anatomic Pathology at Cedars-Sinai. Arthur was deeply committed to medical education and was a superlative teacher, lecturing on renal pathology around the globe, educating renal pathology fellows at Harbor-UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, and participating on the American Society of Nephrology Post-graduate Education Committee. He was a founding member of the Renal Pathology Society and a member of the International Society of Nephrology Global Outreach, which serves to educate and expand care for kidney disease patients, including renal pathology, in medically underserved areas. Arthur also was a successful clinical researcher, describing new entities such as IgM nephropathy, and was one of the first to recognize HIV-associated nephropathy (in 1988). He never tired of a good professional argument with lecturers at American Society Nephrology annual meetings. In recognition of his many contributions to education and research in renal pathology, he was the recipient of the Jacob Churg award from the Renal Pathology Society and the Gift of Life award from the National Kidney Foundation.
Arthur received requests to lecture often, and he developed a love of traveling around the world. Susan accompanied him on many of his trips until his daughters were deemed old enough to be his travel companions. One at a time, Arthur took his family (including his son-in-law, Paul) to South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Russia, Italy, and India, among other locales. He was proud of achieving Premier 1K status on United Airlines, after having once booked and flown roundtrip last-minute to Singapore at the end of the year to maintain his status level. He also accomplished his dream of circumnavigating the globe on someone else’s dime.
Longtime holder of season tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Arthur was a patron of the arts. Arthur loved classical music – especially Beethoven – listening to it loudly in the family room, smoking a pipe on many Sunday afternoons in the 1980s. He was also partial to George Gershwin, as demonstrated by playing Ella Fitzgerald Sings Gershwin during every long-distance family car trip. An amateur photographer with an affinity for top-of-the-line Nikon cameras and lenses, Arthur documented his daughters’ lives through the years, sometimes during interminable photo sessions. He won awards for his photography, mostly from medical journals and hospitals.
Dedicated to his wife, three daughters – Cheryl Bloom (husband Robert Bloom), Gail Cohen (husband Paul Kostuchenko), and Marjorie Cohen (husband David Kuchler) – and two granddaughters (Hannah and Lauren Kostuchenko), Arthur remained close to his brothers (David, Paul, and Michael) and his extended family.
Arthur was known to be extremely generous with his medical expertise. He took the time to speak with anyone who sought his medical and career advice: close and extended family, friends, neighbors, members of his synagogue, daughters’ friends, friends of friends, and so on.
He was a loyal and longtime fan of UCLA sports (especially basketball and football), NPR, and the New York Times. Arthur was an avid puzzle player and insisted on playing the NPR Sunday Puzzle every week as well as doing the NY Times crossword puzzle every day (Sundays in pencil; all other days in pen).
In lieu of flowers, please donate to the National Kidney Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, or anywhere else that makes you think about Arthur.
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