Brown, Michael S.

Brown, Michael S. (Stuart) (1941–  ) biochemical geneticist; born in New York City. He began his close personal and professional relationship with Joseph Goldstein when the two men studied at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (1966–68). Brown investigated digestive system biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health (1968–71), then joined Goldstein at the University of Texas (1971). Together they found that patients with familial hypercholesterolemia have deficient cellular binding sites for low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), and they determined the nucleotide sequence of LDL-receptor genes. For these revolutionary studies in cholesterol metabolism, Brown and Goldstein shared the 1985 Nobel Prize in physiology.