Harrison Scott Brown | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 26, 1917 |
| Died | December 8, 1986 (aged 69) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of California Johns Hopkins University |
| Spouse(s) | Adele Scrimger (divorced) Rudd Owen (divorced) Theresa Tellez |
| Awards | Newcomb Cleveland Prize (1947) ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (1952) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nuclear chemistry Geochemistry |
| Institutions | Metallurgical Laboratory Clinton Engineering Works University of Chicago California Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | Part I. The construction of a mass spectrometer for isotope analysis. Part II. Intermolecular forces in gases and thermal diffusion: the thermal diffusion coefficient of argon at low temperatures (1941) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert D. Fowler |
| Doctoral students | Edward D. Goldberg Clair Cameron Patterson |
| Other notable students | George Tilton |
Harrison Scott Brown (September 26, 1917 – December 8, 1986) was an American nuclear chemist and geochemist. He was a political activist, who lectured and wrote on the issues of arms limitation, natural resources and world hunger.
During World War II, Brown worked at the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory and Clinton Engineer Works, where he worked on ways to separate plutonium from uranium. The techniques he helped develop were used at the Hanford Site to produce the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki. After the war he lectured on the dangers of nuclear weapons.
After the war, he worked at the University of Chicago, where he pioneered nuclear geochemistry. The study of meteorites by Brown and his students led to the first close approximation of the age of the Earth and the solar system. Between 1951 and 1977, he worked at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he contributed to advances in telescopic instrumentation, jet propulsion, and infrared astronomy. In the early 1970s, he began working more directly on the resource/environment issues that he had been developing in his books. In 1977, he became director of the newly created Resource Systems Institute of the East-West Center in Hawaii where he turned full time to work on understanding and influencing the interactions of energy, mineral, and food systems in the Asia-Pacific Region, themes he had developed in his books since the 1950s.