NSWC Dahlgren Division Commander Capt. Sheila Patterson presents Dr. Charles Cohen with a plaque on Dec. 19, 2008, indicating that his name will be associated with an annual honor: the Dr. Charles J. Cohen Science and Technology Excellence Award.

Cohen, a resident of Colonial Beach had been living at King George’s Heritage Hall Health Care, a center for elderly and illness-stricken patients, for the past couple of months.

He is survived by wife, Dorothy, of Westmoreland County, and a daughter, Elissa Steeves of Blacksburg, Va.

Cohen was born in Baltimore on Aug. 21, 1911. He attended Johns Hopkins University, receiving his doctorate in geology in 1935.

Initially, he worked as a geologist for mining companies in Africa and South America until 1942, moving to the U. S. Bureau of Mines in 1943-44 as a geological engineer. He was in the Navy Reserves when he moved to Dahlgren in 1944 to work in exterior ballistics at the Naval Proving Grounds as a mathematician in the Computation and Ballistics Laboratory. He has been quoted as saying that he was a much better mathematician than a geologist.

Cohen spent the rest of his career at Dahlgren, a career that centered on the mathematical and computational aspects of geoballistics and exterior ballistics.

With the acquisition of large, digital computers at Dahlgren after World War II, his interests expanded greatly. He played a leading role in applying computers to scientific problems in many disciplines including astronautics, celestial mechanics, and large digital simulations and these efforts attracted national and international attention for his work.

Cohen’s career coincided with the early history of large calculating machines such as the Aiken MK-II Relay Calculator built for the Naval Proving Ground at Dahlgren in 1947, and subsequently the Naval Ordnance Relay Calculator (NORC). His research into celestial mechanics elicited considerable interest in international meetings of astronomers at the time and demonstrated to that audience the power of the large computer when applied by an expert.

Among his accomplishments is work on the precise mathematical modeling of the Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missiles’ flight performance that was an essential part of the development and the flexibility of the targeting of the submarine-launched system. Additionally, he helped define the gravitational field that evolved from his work in satellite geodesy which was internationally accepted as the best in existence at the time.

Cohen also proved by computer techniques that the relative motion of Pluto and Neptune produced a solution beyond the analytical efforts of astronomers, in showing that the intersecting orbits of Pluto and Uranus would never lead to a collision between the two planets. As well, Cohen, with Richard Anderle, using Transit 1B satellite tracking data, confirmed the existence of the third-order zonal harmonic in the Earth’s gravitational field, which represents a north-south asymmetry, i.e., a ‘‘Pear Shaped Earth.”

After retiring, Cohen kept busy with research projects as a hobby and recently, despite failing health and eyesight, studied such things as the mathematical patterns of sunflowers.

A top annual award given by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is named for Cohen. It honors excellence in science and technology.