Paul Joseph Cohen was an American mathematician. He is best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was awarded a Fields Medal. Cohen won two of the most prestigious awards in mathematics—in completely different fields. He won the American Mathematical Society's Bocher Prize in 1964 for analysis and the Fields Medal, considered the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, in 1966 for logic. He was bron on April 2, 1934 in Long Branch, New Jersey, United States. He was educated at New York, Brooklyn and the University of Chicago, before working his way up to a professorship at Stanford University. He went on to win the prestigious Fields Medal in mathematics, as well as the National Medal of Science and the Bocher Memorial Prize in mathematical analysis. His mathematical interests were very broad, ranging from mathematical analysis and differential equations to mathematical logic and number theory. He died on March 23, 2007 in Stanford, California, United States.