Donald Brown, a biologist who provided key insights into gene amplification and the ways that cells manufacture RNAs, has passed away at the age of 91. In 2012, Brown was honored along with Tom Maniatis with a Lasker~Koshland Special Achievement Award for exceptional leadership and citizenship in biomedical science. Brown, who was the longtime director of the embryology department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, was lauded by the Lasker Foundation for making “numerous fundamental discoveries concerning the nature of genes.” He was also recognized for his generous mentorship to generations of scientists by founding and leading the Life Sciences Research Foundation, an inventive partnership that provides postdoctoral fellowships to some of the world’s most promising researchers.
