text: Early life Robert Frederick Cohen was born on May 14, 1916, in Vancouver, British Columbia, the son of Moise Jacques Cohen, an electrical engineer, and his wife Hattie Alberta née Mackay, a school teacher. He was named Robert after his maternal great uncle Robert Wood, and Frederick after Frederick Alexander Christy, the second husband of his maternal grandmother. He had an older brother, John, who was born in 1913. Moise changed the family surname to Christy by deed poll on August 31, 1918. On November 4, Moise was accidentally electrocuted at work. Hattie died after goitre surgery in 1926. Christy and his brother were then cared for by Robert Wood, their grandmother Alberta Mackay, and their great aunt Maud Mackay.
  Christy was educated at Magee High School, and graduated in 1932 with the highest examination score in the province of British Columbia. He was awarded the Governor General's Academic Medal, and, importantly in view of his family's limited ability to pay, free tuition to attend the  University of British Columbia (UBC). At the award dinner he met the second-place winner, Dagmar Elizabeth von Lieven, whom he dated while at UBC. He received his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in mathematics and physics with first class honors in 1935, and his Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1937, writing a thesis on "Electron attachment and negative ion formation in oxygen".