BROWN, HAROLD

BROWN, HAROLD (1927– ), U.S. physicist and secretary of defense. Brown was born in New York and graduated from Columbia University, earning his Ph.D. in physics in 1949 at the age of 21. After a short period of teaching and postdoctoral research, Brown became a research scientist at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California in Berkeley. In 1952 he joined the staff of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, California, and became its director in 1960. During the 1950s he served as a member of or consultant to several federal scientific bodies and as senior science adviser at the 1958–59 Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Tests. In 1961 he was appointed a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee. That year he was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Award of the U.S. Navy. Brown worked under U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as director of defense research and engineering from 1961 to 1965, and then as secretary of the Air Force from 1965 to 1969. From 1969 – when he was appointed general advisor to the Committee on Arms Control and the Disarmament Agency – to 1977 he was president of the California Institute of Technology. Brown, the first scientist to become secretary of defense, served in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981. While in office, he helped lay the groundwork for the Camp David accords and took part in the strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. After leaving the Pentagon in 1981, he remained in Washington and joined Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies as a distinguished visiting professor of national security. He was later appointed chairman of the university's Foreign Policy Institute. He continued to speak and write widely on national security issues. In later years Brown was affiliated with research organizations and served on the boards of a number of corporations. (Ruth Rossing (2nd ed.)