Stanley Norman Cohen is an American geneticist. Stan Cohen was born on June 30, 1935 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. As a child, he was very interested in science, especially in how things worked. He built and assembled telephones, radios, and thought that he might become a physicist. Cohen worked on ways of breaking up the plasmids, and isolating usable fragments for cloning. In 1972, at a meeting in Hawaii, Cohen sat in on a talk by Herbert Boyer, who spoke about how a restriction enzyme, EcoRI, generated sticky ends. Later that night, a group including Boyer and Cohen met up at a deli. Boyer and Cohen discussed various ways they could collaborate. Recombinant DNA technology was born on a deli napkin. Cohen and Boyer eventually patented their technique one of the first biotech patents granted. Cohen is a Professor of Genetics at Stanford University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1980, won the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1988.