Dr. Theodore E. Brown received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1956. Since then, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he is now Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He served as Vice Chancellor for Research, and Dean of The Graduate College, from 1980 to 1986, and as Founding Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology from 1987 to 1993.

Dr. Theodore has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1972 he was awarded the American Chemical Society Award for Research in Inorganic Chemistry and received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry in 1993. He has been elected a Fellow of the the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society.