Donald Eugene Brownlee (born December 21, 1943) is a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington at Seattle and the principal investigator for NASA's Stardust mission.
[1] In 2000, along with his co-author Peter Ward, he co-originated the term Rare Earth, in reference to the possible scarcity of life elsewhere in the universe.
He has also conducted research as a distinguished visiting professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago.
[6] The International Mineralogical Association has also named a new mineral in honor of Donald Brownlee.
He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1995[10] and in 1999 a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.