Harold Brown (Secretary of Defense) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Brown was born in New York City to Gertrude Cohen and A. H. Brown. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science; Brown took three degrees at Columbia University, including, at age 21 in 1949, a Ph.D. in physics. After a short period of teaching and postdoctoral research, Brown became a research scientist at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, 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. Brown worked under Robert McNamara as director of defense research and engineering from 1961 to 1965, and then as Secretary of the Air Force from October 1965 to February 1969. Between 1969 and 1977, he was president of the California Institute of Technology.