Frank H. Brownell III *49

Frank Brownell, retired professor of mathematics at the University of Washington, died peacefully at home Oct. 21, 2017, at the age of 95.

After graduating from Yale in 1944, he was a lieutenant in the Navy serving in the Pacific. Operating counter-radar machines, he became seriously interested in mathematics and after the war returned to Yale and earned a master’s degree in 1947. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton in 1949.

Brownell married his first wife, Gloria, in 1950 after they met at a folk dance in Princeton. They moved to the state of Washington, where Brownell had grown up, and he spent his entire academic career there at the University of Washington. He retired in 1987 from the university, but he remained an active researcher.

Brownell spent his final three decades working on a new proof for the unmapped mathematics “that could explain the Lamb shift, in which sub-atomic particles jump locations unpredictably.”

With his second wife, Catherine, he enjoyed travel, sailing, and opera.

Catherine predeceased him in 2003; Gloria in 2005; and a daughter in 1970. Brownell is survived by four daughters and five grandchildren.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.