1941-

American Geneticist

One of America's leading experts on cholesterol metabolism in the human body, geneticist Michael S. Brown shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Joseph Goldstein (1940- ). Brown and Goldstein, who began working together in the 1970s, discovered the LDL receptor, a protein in the membranes of a cell that plays a central role in the body's ability to regulate cholesterol levels.

Brown was born on April 13, 1941, in New York City. He performed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1962, and went on to enroll in the university's medical school. There his research work earned him the Frederick Packard Prize in Internal Medicine. After earning his M.D. in 1966, he served as an intern and resident at Massachusetts General in Boston, where he first met Goldstein.

In 1968 Brown became clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health...