Two Jewish officials and Joseph J. Sisco. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, are among six career civil servants in the federal government to receive the $10,000 Rockefeller Public Service Awards for 1971. A fourth official to be honored, Dr. Luna B. Leopold, 56, who is not Jewish, was a guest lecturer for two weeks last winter at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The Jewish officials are Robert Solomon, 50, of Bethesda, Md., an economist and advisor to the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors, and Samuel M. Cohn. 56, of Falls Church, Va., an assistant director for Budget Review, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. Dr. Leopold is a senior research hydrologist with the US Geological Survey of the Department of Interior.
Cohn, in government service for 29 years, was born in Philadelphia. His father, who emigrated from Poland, conducted a corner grocery store in Philadelphia prior to his death in 1945. His mother, a native of the Ukraine, died six months ago. Solomon, youngest of the award winners, has been in government service for 24 years. He has a principal role in insulating the government’s gold reserves from the fluctuations of the commercial gold market. During World War II, he served as a Navy navigator. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard.
The Awards were conceived and financed by John D. Rockefeller III in 1960. They are administered as a national trust by Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The awards, which are tax free grants, are the highest privately sustained honors for career civil servants.
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