Dr. Jewel Plummer Cobb was a pioneering biologist and educator who fought for the rights of women and minorities in the sciences. Cobb passed at the top of the year at the age of 92 and lived a life rich with experiences despite attempts to thwart her rise.
Cobb was born Jewel Plummer on this day in 1924 in Chicago, Ill. Her father was a physician and her mother was a school teacher. Cobb discovered her love of science as a high school honor student reading her father’s textbooks. After a year and a half stint at the University of Michigan, Cobb graduated in 1947 from Talladega College in Alabama with a degree in biology.
Her next educational journey began at New York University. At first, Cobb’s graduate school fellowship application was denied because she was Black. But she persevered and visited the campus, impressing the biology faculty enough to give her an opportunity to enroll. Cobb earned a master’s and PhD in cell biology, then joined the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College as a professor in 1954. That same year, she married Roy Cobb and the pair had a son together. (READ MORE)
