Ezra Abraham "Bud" Brown (born January 22, 1944, in Reading, Pennsylvania) is an American mathematician active in combinatorics, algebraic number theory, elliptic curves, graph theory, expository mathematics and cryptography. He spent most of his career at Virginia Tech where he is now Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics.[1]
Brown earned a BA at Rice University in 1965.[2] He then studied mathematics at Louisiana State University (LSU), getting an MS in 1967 and a PhD in 1969 with the dissertation "Representations of Discriminantal Divisors by Binary Quadratic Forms" under Gordon Pall.[3] He joined Virginia Tech in 1969 becoming Assistant Professor (1969–73), Associate Professor (1973–81), Professor (1981–2005), and Alumni Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Distinguished Professor of Mathematics (2005–2017). He retired from Virginia Tech in 2017.[4][5][1]
Brown became interested in elliptic curves while at LSU and this has remained one of his principal areas of research along with quadratic forms and algebraic number theory in general.
His books include The Unity of Combinatorics (MAA, 2020), co-authored with Richard K. Guy.[6]
While at LSU he met his future wife Jo. Brown remained at Virginia Tech until his retirement in 2017.
At the age of 16 Brown taught himself to play the piano, and in college he acted in several musicals and joined an a cappella chorus. In 1989, he joined the Blacksburg Master Chorale and the chorus of Opera Roanoke. Starting in 2011 he took his love of music and math to MathFest where he an his fellow mathematicians composed new words to old show tunes and even took part in a Gilbert-and-Sullivan Singalong at MathFest 2016 with his "Biscuits of Number Theory" co-editor Art Benjamin.[7]
Brown and his mathematical grandfather, L. E. Dickson, have the same birthday.[8]
