David Samuel Cohen was born on the 13th of July 1966 in New York City, but the name he is known by today hides a bureaucratic necessity rather than a personal preference. The middle initial X was not a chosen nickname or a reference to a secret identity, but a forced adaptation to the strict rules of the Writers Guild of America. In 1998, when the Fox primetime animated shows unionized, Cohen was required to adopt a different name because another writer named David S. Cohen was already credited on projects like Balto and Courage the Cowardly Dog. The Guild prohibits multiple members from using the same name for onscreen credits, so Cohen selected the X simply because it sounded sci-fi-ish and would make him the David Cohen people would remember. He added a period to the initial to ensure no one thought it was a mathematical formula implying David times Cohen, yet the letter itself stands for nothing at all.
From Pancakes To Satellites
Before Cohen ever wrote a joke for a television audience, he was solving complex theoretical computer science problems that would eventually influence the very structure of his future shows. Growing up with two parents who were biologists, Cohen initially planned to follow in their footsteps and become a scientist, but his interests were split between drawing cartoons and writing. He graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey, where he wrote the humor column for the school paper and was a member of the state champion mathematics team. His academic pursuits led him to Harvard University, where he earned a B.A. in physics and served as President of the Harvard Lampoon, and later to the University of California, Berkeley, for a M.S. in computer science. During his graduate studies, he wrote an Apple II compiler and video game in MOS 6502 assembly language, and his most notable academic publication concerned the theoretical computer science problem of pancake sorting, a puzzle that would later inspire the naming of the Burnt pancake graph.The Simpsons And The Word Cromulent
Cohen's transition from the academic world to the entertainment industry began in 1992 when he took a leave of absence from three years of graduate school to write sample TV scripts. This gamble landed him a job writing two of the earliest Beavis and Butt-Head episodes, followed by a move to The Simpsons in 1993 where he wrote or co-wrote thirteen episodes. It was during his tenure on The Simpsons that he achieved a rare linguistic feat by coining the word cromulent in the episode Lisa the Iconoclast. The word, meaning valid or acceptable, was so successfully used in context that it was subsequently included in Webster's New Millennium Dictionary, where it is defined as fine or acceptable. Cohen's work on the show also included writing the Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show, a meta-episode that satirized the very nature of animated television, and he would eventually win two Primetime Emmy Awards for his contributions to the series before moving on to create his own universe.