Michael E. Brown

Mike Brown is the guy who, by his own cheerful admission, killed Pluto, and I find that honesty refreshing for a scientist. Born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1965, schooled at Grissom High and Princeton, he's been at Caltech since 2003 hunting the cold edge of the solar system. His team's discovery of Eris is what really forced the question of what a planet even is, and the dwarf-planet reclassification followed. The 2012 Kavli Prize and the earlier Urey Prize confirm the field took him seriously. To me he's proof that the best discoveries can be the ones that overturn what we thought we knew.

Name (English)

Michael E. Brown

Name (Japanese)

マイケル・ブラウン

Reading

まいける・ぶらうん

Born

June 5, 1965 (age 61)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Snake

Origin

Huntsville, Alabama, United States

Occupation

astronomer

High school

Virgil I. Grissom High School

University

Princeton University

Awards & achievements

• 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics
• 2001 Harold C. Urey Prize

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttps://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown
• Xhttps://x.com/plutokiller
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B1%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A6%E3%83%B3%20(%E5%A4%A9%E6%96%87%E5%AD%A6%E8%80%85)

Tags

• Alabama
• astronomer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.