Brown received his Electrical Engineering degree as part of the wartime Navy V-12 program. After his Navy service, he enrolled at Temple University and earned a master's in psychology. After a brief career in industry, he decided to return to school to pursue a Ph.D., which he earned at Columbia University. At Columbia, he became involved in an early Air Force research project on human factors engineering, which led to a post as head of the Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory at the Naval Air Development Center.