Kenneth Brown

Kenneth Stephen Brown (born 1945) is a professor of mathematics emeritus who spent his career at Cornell University, working in category theory and cohomology theory as well as in buildings. Among other things, he is known for Ken Brown's lemma in the theory of model categories. He is also the author of the book Cohomology of Groups (Graduate Texts in Mathematics 87, Springer, 1982).

Brown grew up in University City, Missouri, outside St. Louis, and graduated from University City High School in 1963. Using a National Merit Scholarship, he attended Stanford University,

Hired by Cornell University in 1971, Brown started as an assistant professor. Brown became an associate professor in 1976 and a full professor in 1981. He served as chair of the mathematics department at Cornell beginning in 2002, and concluding in 2006. He also directed the Summer Math Institute in 2009. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

Known for his teaching, at Cornell Brown received the college-wide Clark Teaching Award and also the Mathematics Department Senior Faculty Award. An October 2010 conference entitled "Approaches to Group Theory" was held in his honor at Cornell. It was organized by his colleagues and former students, and led by the mathematicians Susan Hermiller, John Meier, Karen Vogtmann, and David Webb. Brown became a professor emeritus at Cornell in 2014.

Selected publications Cohomology of Groups, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 87, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1982 [reprinted including corrections, 1994] Buildings, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989 [reprinted 1998] Buildings: Theory and Applications, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 248, Springer, New York, 2008 [co-author with Peter Abramenko]