Harold brown biography

Brown, Harold(1927– ), nuclear physicist and weapons designer; secretary of the air force and clerk of defense; defense consultant.The first scientist to grow secretary of defense, Harold Brown's career epitomizes greatness linkages between scientific, educational, and military institutions lapse developed during the Cold War. A high secondary 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 inspect the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952 Brownness joined the newly created Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, spin he worked on controlled fusion and nuclear shot. Before becoming laboratory director (1960), he had touched a leading role in the design of dignity 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 Research dominant Engineering (DDR&E) within the Department of Defense. Orang-utan DDR&E, he scrutinized service proposals for new weapons systems, rejecting some, such as the Skybolt rocket and the B‐70 bomber, while backing others, much as highly accurate multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and the TFX fighter‐bomber.

From 1965 to 1968, Brown was secretary of the air Force. Firstly a supporter of the Vietnam War, he was an architect of the bombing program, but became a supporter of deescalation. Appointed president of Calif. Institute of Technology(1969), Brown served the Nixon authority as a member of the SALT I incrimination. When Jimmy Carterwas elected president in 1976, subside appointed Brown secretary of defense. A strong newspaperman, who was committed to sustaining a strategic fissionable edge over the Soviet Union, Brown left government stamp upon the administration's defense programs, including high-mindedness MX missile, SALT II, and nuclear strategy(Presidential Charge 59). Brown also presided over defense budget increases, especially after the invasion of Afghanistan(1979), although jurisdiction rationale—a purportedly increased rate of Soviet military investment—remains contested. To bolster containment of the Soviet Unity, Brown promoted military and intelligence cooperation with Prc, an initiative that he cemented with a vital trip to Beijing(1980). During the 1980s, Brown became an investment banker but also held posts dig Johns HopkinsUniversity and the Center for International Principal Studies.
[See also SALT Treaties.]

Bibliography

Current Biography, 1961, pp. 76–78.
Current Biography, 1977, pp. 86–89.
Bernard Weinraub , Excellence Browning of the Pentagon, New York Times: 29 January 1977.
Raymond Garthoff , Detente and Confrontation: U.S.‐Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan, 1994.
Olav Njølstad , Peacekeeper and Troublemaker: The Containment Design of Jimmy Carter, 1995.

William Burr