David X. Cohen

David X. Cohen
Cohen at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con International.
Born	David Samuel Cohen (1966-07-13) July 13, 1966 (age 50) New York, New York, United States
Occupation	Television writer
Period	1992–present
Genre	Comedy
Spouse	Patty Cohen
Children	1

David Samuel Cohen (born July 13, 1966), better known as David X. Cohen, is an American television writer. He has written for The Simpsons and served as the head writer and executive producer of Futurama.

Cohen was born in New York City. He changed his middle initial around the time Futurama debuted due to Writers' Guild policies prohibiting more than one member from having the same name. Both of his parents were biologists, and growing up Cohen had always planned to be a scientist, though he also enjoyed writing and drawing cartoons.

Cohen graduated from Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, New Jersey, where he wrote the humor column for the high school paper and was a member of the school's state champion mathematics team. From there, Cohen went on to attend Harvard University, graduating with a B.A. in physics, and the University of California, Berkeley, with a M.S. in computer science. At Harvard, he wrote for and served as President of the Harvard Lampoon.

Cohen's most notable academic publication concerned the theoretical computer science problem of pancake sorting, which was also the subject of an academic publication by Bill Gates.

After three years of graduate school, Cohen took a leave of absence and started writing sample TV scripts. In 1992, this landed him a job writing two of the earliest Beavis and Butthead episodes. In 1993, Cohen began working on The Simpsons, writing or co-writing thirteen episodes. Nearly five years later, Cohen would team with Matt Groening to develop Futurama, where he served as writer or co-writer of seven episodes and executive producer and head writer of the series' entire run. Cohen has won four Primetime Emmy Awards: Two for Futurama and two for The Simpsons.