F. Robert Brush ’51

Born Nov. 24, 1929, in Phoenixville, Pa., Bob prepared at Mercersburg Academy. He majored in religion at Princeton, where he belonged to the psychology club, was vice president of Prospect Club, and roomed with Bill Davis and Pete Langham. He and his wife, Elinor Sacks Brush, earned doctorates in social relations from Harvard in 1956.  

Bob’s career started in general experimental psychology, focused on animal learning, and moved to hormone-behavior interactions, then to endocrine physiology, and finally to behavioral genetics and molecular genetics. He had appointments at McGill (1955-56); the University of Maryland (1956-1959); the University of Pennsylvania (1959-1965); the University of Oregon Medical School (1965-1971); Syracuse (1971-1980); and Purdue (1981-2000).  

By 2001 he was professor emeritus at Purdue and research professor (adjunct) at San Diego State University. He also had research leaves and sabbaticals at the Wisconsin and Oregon national primate centers, the Sherrington School of Physiology at St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School in London, and work at the University of Hawaii and the Université Rene Descartes in Paris. In retirement he was doing neurobiological behavioral genetic research with animals.  

Bob died in San Diego April 22, 2010. Ten years before his death he reported that he had been married and divorced three times and had two grown children and two grandchildren.