Early Life
Cohen was born as David S. Cohen. The alias "David X. Cohen" was adopted around the origin of his creation, Futurama. As both of his parents were biologists, Cohen had always planned to be a scientist, but he also enjoyed writing and drawing cartoons.
Cohen graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey, where he wrote the humor column for the high school paper and was a member of the school's state champion mathematics team. From there, Cohen went on to attend Harvard University, graduating with a B.A. in physics, and the University of California, Berkeley, with an M.S. in computer science. While at Harvard, he wrote for and served as President of the Harvard Lampoon, and was classmates in the Harvard physics department with director Lawrence Guterman. Both studied under physicist Sidney Coleman and Nobel Prize winner Norman F. Ramsey, as well as Fields Medal winner David Mumford.
Cohen's most notable academic publication concerned the theoretical computer science problem of pancake sorting, which was also the subject of an academic publication by Bill Gates. In addition, Cohen is credited as a co-author on several papers by computer vision researcher Alan Yuille.
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