Brownlee, Alexander

Kenneth Alexander Brownlee was born in 1918 in Middlesborough, England. He earned his B.S. and M.A. in mathematics and physics from the University of Cambridge. He became a statistician at the Research Department of the Distillers Company, Ltd. in 1945. In 1949 he emigrated to the United States and became a biometrician with E.R. Squibb and Sons in New Jersey. He became a research associate and Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics, University of Chicago in 1952 and was named Associate Professor in 1956. He died in Colorado in 1990 at the age of 72.

Dorothy Hamre was born in Seattle, Washington in 1915. She earned her B.S. cum laude in 1937 and her M.S. in 1938, both from the University of Washington. Her PhD in virology came in 1941 from the University of Colorado. She was a bacteriologist with the 9th Corps Area Lab in Fort Lewis, Washington from 1941 to 1942 and then associate in research at the Squibb Institute of Medical Research in New Jersey from 1942 to 1951. During 1951-1952 she worked as a bacteriologist for the Army Chemical Corps at Dugway Proving Grounds near Tooele, Utah. She became a research associate and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, in 1952, where she remained until 1968. Dr. Brownlee died in 1989 in Montrose, Colorado.

Dorothy and Alex were married in 1949 in New Jersey. In 1952 they received appointments at the University of Chicago. Their academic lives of teaching, research, and publishing were punctuated by frequent trips to the Colorado Plateau, where they ran the San Juan, Green, and Colorado Rivers, visited Rainbow Bridge and Monument Valley, and jeeped their way into the Needles, the Maze, the White Rim and Arches areas. Their pictures show a Colorado Plateau as it was before the uranium mining boom, the paved roads, and the dams and reservoirs. In the late 1960s Alex and Dorothy left the Midwest and the big city to settle in their beloved San Juan Mountains. For the next twenty years they made their home in a modest frame "cabin in the woods" about a mile from Ouray, Colorado. They jeeped frequently into the surrounding mountains, punctuating their lives with an occasional professional meeting and some consulting work.

From the guide to the Alexander Brownlee Collection, 1949-1980, (Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives Department)