Larry Cohn was born in San Francisco, California, in 1937 and that is where he grew up. He received a BA in history from the University of California at Berkley in 1958 and his MD degree in 1962 from Stanford University School of Medicine. His internship and junior assistant residency in surgery was on the Harvard Surgical Service at Boston City Hospital from 1962 to 1964. He then was at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, for 2 years as a surgical associate in the Surgery Branch of the National Heart Institute.