Judith Love Cohen: the remarkable story of Jack Black’s mother
Although he’s best known for his comedic film roles and musical prowess in Tenacious D, Jack Black actually comes from a lineage that’s surprisingly more scientific than you might assume. His mother, Judith Love Cohen, wasn’t a performer or artist but rather one of the few female aerospace engineers of her time.
Her story isn’t just inspiring for her family, like Black, but for anyone looking to break barriers and do what they want – particularly young girls and women aspiring to make it in traditionally male-dominated fields. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933, Judith Love Cohen pursued her passion for engineering at a time when very few women ventured into such territories.
She attended Brooklyn College and later received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California. Her passion and dedication to her field led her to work on some of the most significant aerospace challenges of the 20th century.
Among her many gleaming accomplishments, Cohen was part of the team that developed the Abort-Guidance System for the Apollo Space Program. This system was crucial for the Apollo 13 mission, which, as many know, thanks to Ron Howard’s movie, faced a life-threatening crisis when an oxygen tank exploded. Cohen’s system played an essential role in safely guiding the spacecraft back to Earth, saving the lives of the astronauts on board.
Beyond her work on the Apollo missions, Cohen contributed to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Minuteman missile, among other pivotal projects. Her career spanned an era that saw the burgeoning of space exploration, and she was right at the heart of it, contributing her skills and knowledge to projects that expanded humanity’s understanding of the cosmos.
Even more remarkable, however, Cohen is how she balanced her professional achievements with family life. She was a mother of four, with Jack Black being her youngest. Anecdotes from Black and family lore suggest that Cohen was working on complex calculations for the Hubble Space Telescope right up until she went into labour with him – a testament to her tenacity and commitment to both her family and her work.
According to Cohen’s other son, Neil Siegel, even the birth of the Kung Fu Panda star wouldn’t hinder her from making sure she clocked in and applied her brain to some good old-fashioned mathematics. “She actually went to her office on the day that Jack was born,” he wrote in her obituary. “When it was time to go to the hospital, she took with her a computer printout of the problem she was working on. Later that day, she called her boss and told him that she had solved the problem. And … ‘oh, yes, the baby was born, too.'”
