Physics prof climbs his way to top

Like the never-ending quantum equations he scrawls across his blackboards, Physics Professor Terry Cohen, a.k.a. amateur climber extraordinaire, keeps going and going. Even at age 67, Cohen makes free-climbing boulders in Fairmount Park look as easy as walking up a flight of stairs. And in doing so, he has become somewhat of a local icon to University Outing Club climbers 40 or so years his junior who often run into him in the park. Harnesses on and ropes set, they hesitate on their own climbs and watch in awe. "He just floats up the rock," said Joel Seusel, an Engineering sophomore and Outing Club member. "The guy's amazing," said Dave Petrozzi, another club member and a Wharton sophomore. It's taken thousands of climbs during 50 years of practice, however, to make climbing look this easy. Along the way from New Mexico, up through Colorado, and back to Pennsylvania, Cohen has made his mark. Flip through any rock climber's guide book and you'll probably find "Cohen's Last Problem" or "Cohen's Crown," both in Colorado, or talk to a veteran climber, and he'll tell you Cohen led the first ascent up the north face of Capital Peak in Aspen. Talk to him, however, and his humble tone would never give away his accomplishments. "Climbs have gotten a lot harder then they were in my day," Cohen said. "I led those [climbs in the manual] in the '60s." Yet that fact only makes his climbs more impressive, since Cohen had only been out scaling the mountains for six or seven years by the time he had begun to make a name for himself. "I started at age 30 -- late by climbing standards," he said, noting that many climbers have already broken in a few ropes, and perhaps a few bones, by their early 20s. Cohen's path to the rocks, however, was not as direct as some. It was only during his work with physicist Richard Fineman at Los Alamos, N.M., that the rustic allure of the desert Southwest drew him out on the weekends to trade quarks and atoms for coyotes and climbs. "It's irresistibly beautiful out there," Cohen said. "The land calls to you." In answering this call, he co-founded the Aspen Institute of Theoretical Physics, which, as one of the foremost physics institutes in the country, enables physicists from around the world to hone their physics skills during the summer --and perhaps just as important, their overhang skills. The institute is an exception though, as Cohen usually keeps climbing and physics separate from each other, operating in the natural space left between the airy abstraction of the theories and the concrete solid of the rock. "In theoretical physics, you address yourself to a problem, and so frequently you come up with nothing," Cohen said. "In climbing, you address yourself to a problem, and then you solve it." However, "solving it" often comes with its own problems, as Cohen well knows, having lost a good friend to an Alaska climb and experiencing a severe 16-foot fall himself in 1981. "It was a steep, frictionless climb with no positive holds, and like a cheapskate I hadn't gotten my shoes resoled," he remembers. "I just peeled off the climb backwards." But the resulting right hand fracture did not keep him off the mountain for long. "Your life is there before you. You gotta keep climbing," he said. Yet Cohen admits that he is not always up to the climbs of today, as the years begin to take their toll. "I don't free climb as much as I used to, and the climbs definitely are taking longer," he said. "There was one climb in Colorado I used to be able to do before breakfast. Now I'll be lucky to get it in before dinner." Nevertheless, Cohen is far from calling it quits. "Climbing puts you in beautiful places with interesting people. It puts you in touch with life," he said. "I plan to keep on going as long as I can."