After a year as a college student in Idaho, he joined the Army Air Corps, where he was assigned to work in chemical warfare operations.
[3] Brown was offered a faculty position at MIT by Jack Buchanan, who at the time was interested in recruiting biochemists.
During his tenure as dean, he worked on curricular issues, including the development of a communication requirement to be incorporated into the undergraduate program[3] and the planning stages of a new building for biology research.
[4] Brown is notable for his longevity as an educator, having started teaching the department's undergraduate biochemistry class when he arrived in 1954.
[4] In 1994 Brown was one of four MIT professors named that year as MacVicar Fellows, which provided support for faculty interested in developing improvements to undergraduate education.
His PhD work involved isolating and identifying a compound needed for the growth of Lactobacillus bulgaricus, which proved to be pantethine, an intermediate in the synthesis of coenzyme A.