Sophie Coe facts for kids

Sophie as a student at Radcliffe College

Sophie Dobzhansky Coe (born July 7, 1933 – died May 25, 1994) was a smart scientist who studied people and cultures (an anthropologist). She also loved learning about the history of food, especially chocolate. She wrote books and articles about these topics.

Early Life and Learning

Sophie Dobzhansky's parents, Natalia Sivertzeva and Theodosius Dobzhansky, were from Ukraine. Her father was a famous scientist who studied genes and how living things change over time. They moved to the United States from the USSR in 1927.

Sophie was their only child. She was born in Pasadena, California in 1933. When she was seven, in 1940, her family moved to New York. In her teenage years, Sophie spent her summers helping at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Here, she assisted Barbara McClintock, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who studied cells. People said Sophie was very gentle when she took care of the plants used in experiments.

In 1955, Sophie graduated from Radcliffe College. She studied anthropology, which is the study of human societies and cultures. She became very good at Russian and Portuguese. A fun fact about her college days is that she kept a pet tarantula in a bottle! She got married just before she graduated. Later, in 1964, she earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University.

Her Work and Books

Sophie Coe helped share important knowledge by translating parts of a book called "The Writing of the Maya Indians" (1967) by Yuri Knorozov. Knorozov was a scientist who figured out how to read the ancient Maya writing system. Sophie's translation was very important because it helped other scientists accept his ideas, which were not believed at first.

She also studied how people cooked in the "New World" (the Americas) a long time ago. She wrote many articles for a special food magazine called Petits Propos Culinaires. All her research on this topic led to her book, America's First Cuisines, which came out in 1994.

This book had a lot of information about chocolate. Sophie decided to write a whole new book just about chocolate, called The True History of Chocolate. Sadly, she became very ill while working on this book. Her husband, Michael D. Coe, finished it for her, and it was published after she passed away in 1996. This book is still very popular today and has been printed many times.

Sophie Coe also collected a huge number of books about the history of cooking. This included almost 1,000 cookbooks from all over the world, some dating back to the 1700s. She also had handwritten cookbooks. Before she died, she gave her collection of community cookbooks to the Schlesinger Library. After her death, her husband gave the rest of her amazing collection to the library.

After Sophie passed away, her husband Michael, along with their friends Alan Davidson and Harlan Walker, started something special. They created the Sophie Coe Prize. This is a special award given every year at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Sophie used to go to this event every year. The prize is given to someone who writes an excellent and original essay or book chapter about food history.

Her Family Life

On June 5, 1955, Sophie married Michael D. Coe. This was the summer she graduated from college. They had a Russian Orthodox wedding in New York City. Michael Coe was also a professor, an archaeologist, and an anthropologist. He was well-known for his work on the ancient Maya civilization and other cultures in Mesoamerica (parts of Mexico and Central America) before Christopher Columbus arrived.

Sophie and Michael traveled and worked together a lot. In 1969, they bought a farm called Skyline Farm in Heath, Massachusetts. Here, Sophie became very good at cooking and gardening. They had five children: Nicholas, Andrew, Sarah, Peter, and Natalie. Sophie Coe passed away in 1994.

Her Published Works

Books

• Coe, Sophie D., America's First Cuisines (1994), ISBN: 0292711557 (hardcover); ISBN: 029271159X (paperback)
• Coe, Sophie D. and Michael Coe, The True History of Chocolate (1996; 2003; 2013), Thames and Hudson, New York. ISBN: 0500290687 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0500290682 (hardcover)

Articles

• Coe, Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe. 1957 Review of Diego de Landa: Soobshchenie o delakh v lsukatani, 1566, by Y. V. Knorosov. American Antiquity 23 (2): 207–208.
• Coe, Sophie D. (trans.), Knorosov, Yuri V. 1958 'The Problem of the study of the Maya Hieroglyphic writing.” American Antiquity 23: 248-291.
• Coe, Sophie. "On Kulich." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 12 (1982): 19-
• Coe, Sophie. "Soviet Cook Books." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 16, March (1984): 13–27.
• Coe, Sophie. "Aztec Cuisine Part I." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 19, March (1985): 11–22.
• Coe, Sophie. "Aztec Cuisine Part II." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 20, July (1985): 44–59.
• Coe, Sophie. "Aztec Cuisine Part III." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 21, November (1985): 45–56.
• Coe, Sophie. "Eating Guinea Pigs in Italy. (Notes and Queries)" Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 28, April (1988): 63.
• Coe, Sophie. "Inca Food: Animal and Mineral." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 29, July (1988): 7–17.
• Coe, Sophie. "Inca Food: Vegetable." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 31, March (1989): 29–38.
• Coe, Sophie. "Peru: The Inca and the Spaniards." Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) 37, May (1991): 27–39.

See also

In Spanish: Sophie D. Coe para niños