Harold brown biography

Brown, Harold(1927– ), nuclear physicist and weapons designer; secretary of the air force and secretary of defense; defense consultant.The first scientist to become secretary of defense, Harold Brown's career epitomizes the linkages between scientific, educational, and military institutions that developed during the Cold War.

A high school graduate at age fifteen, Brown received his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia Universityin 1949, at twenty‐one. After working at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952 Brown joined the newly created Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where he worked on controlled fusion and nuclear explosives.

Before becoming laboratory director (1960), he had played a leading role in the design of the Polaris missile warhead and taken part in discussions on Project Plowshare (peaceful uses of nuclear weapons). Brown joined the Kennedy administration in May 1961 as director of the Division of Re