Harold Dean Brown (August 13, 1927 – June 24, 2003) was an American physicist and Sanskrit scholar renowned for his interdisciplinary work bridging science and spirituality.
He held a Ph.D. in physics and made significant contributions to the understanding of ancient Indian scriptures, particularly the Upanishads and the Yoga Sutras, through his translations and interpretations.
Brown received his BS degree in physics, mathematics, and chemistry from South Dakota State College in 1947.
From 1952 to 1958 he was a nuclear reactions specialist in the DuPont Atomic Energy Division, Savannah River Laboratory and Project Matterhorn at Princeton University.
[2] While at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study he claimed to be a friend of Albert Einstein, with whom he played Go as a way of exploring John von Neumann's game theory.
[3] During his time at DuPont, Brown served as chief scientist at the Savannah River Laboratory in a four-person evaluation team that selected the IBM 650 (the second off the line) in 1956 as the first general purpose electronic digital computer system installed there.
[4] According to R. R. Haefner In the summer of 1953, with assistance from Marian Spinrad, [Brown] used Friden hand calculators to determine the flux distribution for a fuel rod that was later tested at the Hanford Works.
His linguistic work included his scholarship of Sanskrit, and he made original translations of both the Upanishads and the Yoga Sutras.