Harrison S. Brown

Harrison Scott Brown (born September 26, 1917 - December 8, 1986 ) was an American physicist and geochemist .

Brown studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his PhD in nuclear chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1941 .

Brown worked for the Manhattan Project and played a role at Oak Ridge in isolating plutonium for the first atomic bombs. In July 1945, he was part of a group of scientists who wrote a petition to the US President. After working on the Manhattan Project, he became an explicit opponent of nuclear weapons. In 1947 he became a member of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists and at the end of his life was editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists .

From 1946 to 1951 he taught at the University of Chicago before moving to Caltech . Brown's research areas were mass spectrometry , thermal diffusion, fluorine and plutonium chemistry, geochemistry and the study of planetary structures. In 1955 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1959 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 1966 to the American Philosophical Society . As early as the 1960s, he was one of those scientists who believed that exoplanets were common.

Like many other scientists, Brown wrote science fiction to fuel speculation. In 1968 he published The Cassiopeia Affair with Chloe Zerwick . As in Fred Hoyle's A for Andromeda (1962) and The Listeners by James Gunn in 1972, it deals with the consequences of radio contact with intelligent aliens.

From 1962 to 1974 he was foreign secretary at the National Academy of Sciences . He was the science advisor to Adlai Stevenson and Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaigns . He has also held positions as a delegate, advisor and member of numerous government, political and professional organizations.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member History: Harrison S. Brown. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 21, 2018 .