Browne attended Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in Manhattan, from kindergarten through to twelfth grade.

On June 11, 1963, he took his famous photographs of the death of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy road intersection in Saigon, in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngô Đình Diệm.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting[8] and received many job offers, eventually leaving the AP in 1965.

Having worked as a chemist prior to becoming a journalist,[4] in 1977 Browne became a science writer, serving as a senior editor for Discover.

His mother professed pacifist views and belonged to the Quaker community, his father worked as an architect and practiced Catholicism.