Rose Laub Coser was born on May 4, 1916, in Berlin, Germany to Polish and Ukrainian Jewish parents. They were both ardent socialists and worked as printers and publishers. Rose was named for one of the writers they published, the Marxist theorist Rosa Luxembourg. In 1939, the Laub family escaped Nazi Germany by immigrating to New York City. There, she met and married another Jewish refugee, Lewis A. Coser, in 1942.

Shortly afterwards, Laub Coser began studying philosophy at the New School of Social Work. The Cosers later both studied at Columbia University, where Laub Coser earned a PhD in sociology in 1957. From 1951-1959, she taught at Wellesley College and also worked for a time at Harvard Medical School and Northeastern University. In 1968, the Cosers both obtained positions at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She built a reputation for her work on gender, race, and societal roles, publishing Life in the Ward (1962) and In Defense of Modernity: Role Complexity and Individual Autonomy (1991).

In 1987 Rose Laub Coser and Lewis Coser both retired from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. They moved to Cambridge and secured adjunct professorships at Boston College. Laub Coser taught there until her death at the age of 78 on August 21, 1994 in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

Sources:

Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs. "Rose Laub Coser: In Memoriam, 1916-1994," Dissent, vol. 42 (1995).

Freidenreich, Harriet. "Rose Laub Coser." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Biography in Context. Web. 18 Aug. 2016.

Saxon, Wolfgang. "Rose L. Coser, 78; Taught Sociology At Stony Brook," The New York Times, August 24, 1994.

Vromen, Suzanne. "Rose Laub Coser." In Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive, 2009. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/coser-rose-laub