Percy Edgar Brown

Percy Edgar Brown (1885 to 1937) was an American soil scientist at Iowa State University. Born on a farm in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, he worked from 1906 to 1910 as assistant soil chemist and bacteriologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station under J. G. Lipman, took degrees at Rutgers University up to a doctorate in 1912, and joined the Iowa State College faculty in 1910 in soil bacteriology. He became professor in 1914 and head of the Department of Agronomy in 1932, and worked on soil bacteriology, soil fertility and soil survey. His book Soils of Iowa, published in 1936, carried the map Landform Regions of Iowa. He helped build the soil science curriculum and served the American Society of Agronomy as secretary-treasurer from 1920 to 1937, except in 1932 when he was its president, until his sudden death from a heart attack.