As a youngster, John Brown had such a keen fascination for science that he built his own telescope out of flashlight lenses tossed along the railroad.
In the 1930s, Mr. Brown and his friends would find flashlights along the tracks near the old Ponce de Leon Ballpark in Atlanta. They would grind the glass lenses to a focus and, with the help of books, assemble their own telescopes.
Then at night, the youngsters would take their star gazers out to the park.
“Their mothers would think they’d lost their minds,” quipped Dorothy Brown, his wife of 56 years. “They’d lie down in the ballpark and observe the stars.”
Mr. Brown always loved anything scientific, Mrs. Brown said. In fact, on the couple’s first date in 1952, Mr. Brown took his future wife to the observatory at Agnes Scott College. Both had majored in physics in college.
“Being a fellow of the same occupation, that was his line, ‘How about going to the Astronomy Club with me?’ ” Mrs. Brown said. “But it worked. It was exciting. We used the telescope to watch whatever the heavens were showing.”
John Lee Brown, 83, of Marietta died Wednesday of prostate cancer at home. A funeral is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Monday at Transfiguration Catholic Church in Marietta. Medford Peden Funeral Home & Crematory is in charge of arrangements.
Born in 1925, Mr. Brown was a lifelong metro Atlantan. He graduated from Boys High School in 1943, then did a brief stint in the Army Air Corps during World War II.
After the war, he headed to Georgia Tech and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1950. From there, he began a 45-year career with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, retiring in 1995 as head of the materials characterization laboratory.
During the early ’50s, he operated the only electron microscope in the state, said Wayne Cooper, who worked with Mr. Brown as a Georgia Tech student in the early 1970s.
An electron microscope uses electrons vs. photons to do imaging, allowing for much higher magnification of components such as human cells and bacteria than that of an optical microscope.
“He was the only person I knew who had an electron microscope in his home,” Mr. Cooper said.
After retiring, Mr. Brown became a noted forensic consultant. A specialist in metals, he could examine a bracket that had failed in a plane crash, for instance, and determine whether it failed because of its use or manufacturing, Mr. Cooper said.
“John Brown was to scientific method and forensics what Columbo was to whodunit,” he said. “He was a super sleuth when it came to using the tools that he had to figure out the what, the where and ... how it happened.”
And in 1980, Mr. Brown was asked to join the local group in the Shroud of Turin Research Project, an examination of an ancient cloth that many believe was placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial.
“Being a microscopist, he was able to work on it because of his expertise,” Mrs. Brown said.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Brown is survived by daughter Karen Brown Bakhtiari of Marietta; sons Barry Leo of Stone Mountain and Alan John of Marietta; and three grandchildren.
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