Career Background
Leonard A. Cole has proven competencies in multiple fields, as is evident in both his academic as well as work experience. His career has spanned decades and has successfully impacted the various fields to which he has made progressive contributions. Below is an overview of his robust career through the years.
Dr Cole retired from his practice as a dentist in 2000 but continued to write books. His 10th, which was published last year, told the story of Dr Fredrick Reines, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics for co-discovering the neutrino, a subatomic particle. Dr Reines was Dr Cole’s cousin.
Before Dr Leonard A. Cole turned his attention towards the clandestine military tests that were widely being carried out across the United States between 1949 and 1969, when then President Richard M. Nixon went ahead to shut it down, he was actively engaged in his successful dental practice. He endeavoured to find out the impact of the bacterial as well as chemical agents that had been periodically released to the general population in arrears, such as the New York Subway station and over the San Francisco skies, for the purposes of gathering vital data pertaining to the effect that a more severe attack of similar nature would have on the people residing in the country. A breach in the army’s confidential reports in the 1970s revealed the existence of these experiments to the general public prompting senate hearings on the same in 1977.
Acquiring proficiency in both the health sciences as well as public policy, Leonard A. Cole testified before United States congressional committees and was subsequently invited to give presentations to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In his capacity as a member of the WMD Working Group of the Aspen Institute‘s Homeland Security Group, he successfully co-authored and edited the working group’s 2012 report on WMD Terrorism. His 2021 book, chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino, was cited by Symmetry magazine as being among the year’s ten most notable science-related titles. This particular book was also made it to the 2022 Indie Book Awards finals in the Autobiography/Biography category.
Leonard A. Cole was national chairman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs from 2000 to 2002. He was a featured commentator in Avoiding Armageddon (2003), a PBS documentary on biological and chemical warfare. His book, The Anthrax Letters: A Medical Detective Story, was named an Honor Book by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
He served on the board of directors of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine and on the advisory board of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. While he was appointed by the then Governor of New Jersey to the New Jersey-Israel Commission, he relied on his immense and diverse knowledge in this field to effectively chair the Commission’s committee on Homeland Security. He further coordinated exchanges on terror medicine and domestic security between American and Israeli academics and professionals while taking advantage of the good working relationship between the two countries to enhance their respective abilities to secure their borders as well as international security standards.
Leonard A. Cole made informative appearances on television. He was actively engaged in either the authoring or editing of eleven books covering scientifically diverse topics and contributing to various fields of study. His articles were featured in several major academic journals and publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Sciences, and Scientific American. More of his insightful interviews and presentations were made and posted by the PBS News Hour.
Personal Background
He married his wife, Ruth Gerber, in 1957. They had three children and remained enviably married until his death. During his later years, they lived their modest lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Dr Cole and his wife, a retired school teacher, had three children, his daughter Wendy Cole, two sons, William and Philip Cole, and six grandchildren.
Leonard A. Cole passed away on September 18, 2022, at a hospital in Ridgewood at the age of 89 years old.