Peter Brown (historian) - Life

Life

Peter Brown was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a Scots-Irish Protestant family. He was educated at Aravon School, the oldest preparatory school in Ireland and one of its most distinguished, and then at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire, one of the great "public" schools in England. From 1953 to 1956, he read Modern History at New College, Oxford. His potential was recognized by the award of the Harmsworth Senior Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, and a seven-year Prize Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.

Following his graduation Brown began, but did not complete, a doctoral thesis under the external supervision of Arnaldo Momigliano (at that time Professor of Ancient History at University College London). All Souls College subsequently elected him a Research Fellow in 1963 and a Senior Research Fellow in 1970. The Modern History Faculty of the University of Oxford appointed him a Special Lecturer in 1966 and a Reader (ad hominem) in 1973. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971. Brown left Oxford to become Professor of Modern History and Head of the Department of History at Royal Holloway College in the University of London (1975-8), and subsequently left Britain to become Professor of Classics and History in the University of California at Berkeley (1978–86) and, since 1986, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979 and a Resident Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. Following his earlier books, he has received some prestigious and substantial research grants, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 1982 and the Distinguished Achievement Award for scholars in the humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001.

Brown has delivered a substantial number of named lectures. These include the Carl Newell Jackson Lectures at Harvard University (delivered 1976); the Stenton Lecture at Reading University (delivered 1976); the Haskell Lectures at the University of Chicago (delivered 1978); the ACLS Lectures in the History of Religion (delivered 1981-2); the Curti Lectures in the University of Wisconsin, Madison (delivered 1988); the Raleigh Lecture in History in the British Academy (delivered 1992); the Tanner Lectures at Cambridge and Yale (delivered 1993 and 1996 respectively); the Sigmund H Danziger Jr Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago (delivered 1997); the Menahem Stern Lectures in Jerusalem (delivered 2000); a Presidential Lecture at Stanford University (delivered 2002); the Charles Homer Haskins Lecture ("A Life of Learning") for the American Council of Learned Societies (delivered 2003); and the Ronald Syme Lecture at Oxford University (delivered 2006).