Michael S. Brown was born on April 13, 1941, in Brooklyn,
New York, the eldest
child of Harvey Brown, a textile salesman, and Evelyn Brown,
a housewife. His sister Susan was born three years later. When Brown was 11
years old the family moved to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia,
where Brown attended Cheltenham High School. An amateur radio operating license
obtained at age 13 led to a life-long fascination with science. A serious interest
in journalism also developed early. These two passions, science and writing,
have remained paramount ever since.
Brown graduated in 1962 from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University
of Pennsylvania, with chemistry as his major subject. He spent most of his time
at the headquarters of the student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, where
he served as features editor and briefly as editor-in-chief. In 1966 Brown received
his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. In 1964
he married Alice Lapin, a companion from childhood. The next two years were
spent as intern and resident in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston. Here Brown met Joseph L. Goldstein, a fellow intern, and
the two established the friendship and mutual respect that led to their long-term
scientific collaboration.
The years 1968-1971 were spent at the National Institutes of Health where Brown
served initially as Clinical Associate in gastroenterology and hereditary disease.
He then joined the Laboratory of Biochemistry, headed by Earl R. Stadtman, a
pioneer in the disclosure of the mechanisms by which enzymes are regulated.
Here Brown learned the techniques of enzymology and the fundamental principles
of metabolic regulation. Brown made an important contribution to the Stadtman
effort when he and a colleague discovered that a regulatory enzyme in the glutamine
synthetic pathway was controlled by covalent attachment of a nucleotide, uridine.
In 1971 Brown joined the division of Gastroenterology in the Department of Internal
Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. His
selection of Dallas was strongly motivated by his friendship with Goldstein,
who had graduated from the Southwestern Medical School. In Dallas, Brown came
under the influence of Donald W. Seldin, Chairman of the Department of Internal
Medicine, an inspirational figure whose passion for medical science shaped the
lives of a generation of Texas students.
Soon after his arrival in Dallas, Brown succeeded in solubilizing and partially
purifying 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase, a previously enigmatic
enzyme that catalyzes the rate-controlling enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis.
He and Goldstein had developed the hypothesis that abnormalities in the regulation
of this enzyme were the cause of familial hypercholesterolemia, a genetic disease
in which excess cholesterol accumulates
in blood and tissues. The formal scientific
collaboration with Goldstein began one year later, in 1972, just after Goldstein
returned to Dallas from a postdoctoral fellowship in Seattle. The two young
physicians initially maintained separate laboratories, but by 1974 the laboratories
had been formally joined.
Throughout the decade of the 1970's, when their scientific work was most intensive,
Brown and Goldstein continued to function as academic physicians, each performing
clinical attending rounds on the general medicine wards of Parkland Memorial
Hospital for six to twelve weeks per year. They also conducted frequent teaching
rounds in medical genetics. Their research
efforts were aided by a number of
talented senior collaborators and junior associates, as well as by frequent
interchange with interested members of the Department of Internal Medicine.
In 1974, Brown was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of Internal Medicine
at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He became a Professor
in 1976. In 1977 he S. Brown man dog free porn - Michael fucking was rape Michael websites - Brown S. gang - in pictures Michael underwear their S. men Brown of Brown movies - adult Michael shocking S. S. - Электродвигатель АИР Brown Michael 2110 Brown 12 направленный подиум ВАЗ S. Michael 11 - ткань appointed Michael dog S. porn man Brown - fucking free Paul J. Thomas Professor of Medicine and Genetics,
and Director of the Center for Genetic Disease at the same institution. In 1985,
Brown was appointed Regental Professor of the University of Texas.
Brown was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States in 1980. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American
Physicians, the American Society of Biological Chemists, and the American Society
for Cell Biology. He is a Diplomate
of the American Board of Internal Medicine
and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.
Brown received several student awards at the University of Pennsylvania, including
a Proctor and Gamble Scholarship (1958-1962), the David L. Drabkin Prize in
Biochemistry (1962), and the Frederick L. Packard Prize in Internal Medicine
(1966). He was elected to Phi Beta
Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha. From 1974 to
1977 he was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He
has served on several review boards including the Molecular Cytology Study Section
of the National Institutes of Health (1974-77) and the editorial boards of the
Journal of Lipid Research, the Journal of Cell Biology, Arteriosclerosis
and Science. He has been a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors
of the Jane Coffin Childs Fund since 1980.
Brown received the honorary degree
of Doctor of Science from the University
of Chicago (1982) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1982). With his colleague,
Goldstein, Brown has shared the following awards: Heinrich Wieland Prize for
Research in Lipid Metabolism (1974); Pfizer Award for Enzyme Chemistry of the
American Chemical Society (1976); Albion O. Bernstein Award of the New York
State Medical Society (1977); Passano Award (1978); Lounsbery Award of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences (1979); Gairdner Foundation International Award
(1981); New York Academy of Sciences Award in Biological and Medical Sciences
(1981); Lita Annenberg Hazen Award (1982); V.D. Mattia Award of the Roche Institute
of Molecular Biology (1984); Distinguished Research Award of the Association
of American Medical Colleges (1984);
Research Achievement Award of the American
Heart Association (1984); Louisa Gross Horwitz Award (1984); 3M Life Sciences
Award of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (1985);
William Allan Award of the American Society
of Human Genetics (1985); and the
Albert D. Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research (1985).
Brown and Goldstein jointly delivered the following lectures: Harvey Lecture
(1977); Christian A. Herter Lectures at Johns Hopkins University (1979); Harry
Steenboch Lectures at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1980); Smith,
Kline, and French Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley (1981);
Duff Memorial Lecture of the
American Heart Association (1981); Doisy Lectures
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1983); the first Pfizer Lecture
in Honor of Konrad Bloch at Harvard University (1985); and the Berzelius Lecture
at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm (1985).
Brown and his wife, Alice, have two daughters: Elizabeth (born in 1973) and
Sara (born in 1977).
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1985, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1986
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.