Edward L. Cochran

Edward L. Cochran (born 1929) was the second County Executive of Howard County, Maryland.

Early life and education
Dr. Cochran graduated from Loyola University in 1949. He earned his PhD. from the University of Notre Dame. Cochran has six children. His daughter Courtney Watson, has followed a similar political career, serving on the Howard County Board of Education, then later on the Howard County Council. Cochran lives in a 19th-century farmhouse on 10 acres in the rural western tier of Howard County.

Career as a Scientist
Cochran worked for the Applied Physics Laboratoryas a chemist for most of his career except for four years during which he was County Executive of Howard County, Maryland. As chemist, Dr. Cochran was part of a team that carried out pioneering studies on the nature of free radicals, along with Chih-Kung Jen, Frank. J. Adrian, Vernon A. Bowers, Samuel Foner, and others, including the description of the Electron Spin Resonance spectra of simple free radicals trapped in solid matrices at cryogenic temperatures. Dozens of free radicals were described for the first time, including hydrogen, deuterium, nitrogen, methane, alkyl, formyl, ethynyl and vinyl, NH2 and ND2 and cyanogen and Methylene Imino. Their paper on electron spin resonance proved to be one of the most frequently cited APL publications into the 21st century.

Political activity
Cochran was a member of the Howard County Board of Education from 1964 until 1968. The Board of Education had pursued a policy of voluntary integration prior to 1964, which resulted in only a fraction of black students attending white schools. As late as 1964, ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, the board stated that it would not consider forcing integration until 1967, to "allow for a reasonable period of adjustment" to the change. However, in May 1964, as the county experienced increasing growth, the board was expanded to five members, and Cochran was appointed as one of the board's new members. He is credited by Maryland State Senator Robert Kittleman, then the education chairman of Howard County's NAACP chapter, for providing the swing vote on 9 February 1965 to close all-black schools.

Cochran served as a councilman from 1971 to 1974, strongly supporting the new Howard Research project, Columbia. >. Cochran pursued strict sign legislation in the County against lobbying from Baltimore Council member Walter S. Orlinsky. Omar J. Jones criticized councilman Cochran for his staunch support of the project before leaving office.

In 1974 Cochran was elected County Executive of Howard County, and four out of five council positions are filed by residents of the Columbia project. During his term, Ellicott City and Elkridge faced a building moratorium from 1973 that extended to 1980 due to insufficient capacity in the sewage plant in Baltimore that served portions of the county. In 1978 Cochran deeded the historic African American Mount Gregory church and Cooksville school site back from the county public works department.

Cochran was also a member of the Regional Planning Council, 1974–78 and of the Criminal Justice Information Advisory Board, 1977-80.

In 2009, the Howard County Human Rights Commission awarded Dr. Cochran the 2009 Human Rights Award. In 2010 Dr. Cochran was awarded the James Clark Jr. Medal from Howard County Coummunity College for his role in growing Howard Community College as a member of the board of trustees.

Election history
In 1970 Cochran ran for the newly created position of County Council member. In 1974 Cochran became the County executice of Howard County. In 1978 Cochran lost to J. Hugh Nichols in the Democratic primary for county executive. In 1980 Cochran ran for the Howard County Board of Appeals.