Roger William Brown (April 14, 1925 – December 11, 1997), an American social psychologist, was born in Detroit.
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World War II interrupted his education at the University of Michigan. During the Battle of Okinawa he served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy. Returning to Michigan after the war, he became interested in the science of linguistics, earning a Bachelors degree in psychology in 1948 and a Ph.D. in 1952. Following his graduation from Michigan, he became an instructor and then assistant professor at Harvard. In 1957 he left Harvard for a position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) where he wrote his monumental Words and Things. He became a full professor of psychology at M.I.T. in 1960.
In 1962, Brown accepted a professorship at Harvard, where he became the John Lindsley Professor in Memory of William James, a position he held until his retirement in 1995.
He completed his textbook, Social Psychology, in 1965. The book was widely adopted in many universities as a core textbook. The success of the initial version of Social Psychology encouraged him to write a completely new textbook on social psychology which he entitled simply Social Psychology: The Second Edition, published in 1986. This was actually a very different book to the first edition.
He then undertook a landmark study of the linguistic development of children, published in A First Language.
He followed this work with an introductory textbook on psychology, written with his colleague Richard Herrnstein.
At this time he concentrated upon studying specific familiar experiences such as that of "flashbulb memories" (for example, What were you doing the moment you heard of JFK's assassination?), and the "tip of the tongue phenomenon."
Brown met his future partner of some 42 years, Albert Gilman, while both were studying at Michigan. Gilman later became a professor of English at Boston University. While his sexual orientation and his relationship with Gilman were known to many of his close friends, and he served on the editorial board of The Journal of Homosexuality from 1985, he did not come out publicly until 1989.[1] After Gilman died in 1989, Brown consoled himself by pursuing relationships with several younger men, chronicled in his memoir.