The Jean Wright Cohn Endowment Fund in the Museum of Zoology has been established through a very generous donation from her living trust to support the activities of the museum’s Bird Division.

The gift will be a meaningful legacy to Wright Cohn, an avid ornithologist who obtained her doctorate through the UMMZ program, and will carry her commitment to avian biodiversity forward, to future generations of UMMZ faculty, researchers and students. The UMMZ community is naturally saddened by the loss of a friend and colleague, and grateful that she remembered the museum in such a meaningful and impactful way.

Wright Cohn regularly attended the scientific meetings of the American Ornithologists’ Union and the International Ornithological Congress, where she was a well-known and liked participant.  In the UMMZ Bird Division, Wright Cohn periodically worked on a study of the anatomy of the hind limb in two “double-jointed” hawks, the African Polyboroides gymnogene and the Neotropical Geranospiza crane-hawk.