Harrison Brown papers, 1942-1983

Harrison Scott Brown (1917-1986), a nuclear chemist, was born in Sheridan, Wyoming and spent much of his childhood in California. After receiving his Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1941, he worked on plutonium production for the Manhattan Project, which produced the world's first atomic bombs. Soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which was dedicated to preventing the further development and spread of atomic weapons. He was a professor of geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology from 1951-1977, foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962-1974, and editor of the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." Brown also served as a science advisor to the Democratic National Committee.