Frank Edward Brown (LaGrange, Illinois, USA, May 24, 1908 – Marco Island, Florida, February 28, 1988)[1] was a preeminent Mediterranean archaeologist.
Early a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Brown went to Syria in 1932 to excavate at Dura-Europos with the joint Yale University- Académie des Inscriptions (France) mission under the direction of Franz Cumont and Michael Rostovtzeff and became field director at Dura in 1935.
At the invitation of the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome, he returned in 1964 to the Regia in the Roman Forum, a building of which he had made an architectural study during his years as a Fellow.
[10] The excavation of the Regia was to yield the most substantial evidence for the early organization and development of the Forum since the work of Giacomo Boni at the turn of the century.
He continued to serve the Academy thereafter as Thomas Spencer Jerome Lecturer in 1979, from which series came the book Cosa: The Making of a Roman Town (University of Michigan Press, 1980), and as the leader of a summer seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities on the early colonies of Rome in 1980.
In March 1987 Frank Brown took leave of Rome and the American Academy to join his wife of 50 years, the former Jaquelin Goddard, in Florida.