In Memoriam: Alexander C. “Alastair” Brownie, PhD

By Keith Gillogly

Brownie was a longtime medical educator and researcher at the Jacobs School, serving its students and his colleagues for more than 60 years.

After joining UB in 1963 initially as a research assistant professor of pathology with an adjunct appointment in biochemistry, Brownie quickly became a beloved faculty member and prolific educator and researcher. Over the next six decades, he’d teach thousands of medical students and dental students while maintaining an active research program.

Brownie continued coming to campus into his nineties to teach and talk science with his colleagues, remaining an energetic and enthusiastic scholar.

“He was a frequent visitor to my office, often arriving with articles in hand, eager to share new research that had inspired him. His abiding passion for biochemistry, metabolism and teaching enriched our community in countless ways,” says Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School.

“His devotion to biochemistry and metabolism was matched only by his devotion to his students. Those who learned from him, and those who were fortunate enough to work alongside him, know how profoundly he shaped our community.”

Brownie’s research spanned steroid biochemistry, metabolism and endocrinology. He was the first recipient of a 10-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) Merit Award at UB for his research on hypertension.

“Alastair was a force of nature and had been coming in and teaching until this past fall. He was passionate about biochemistry and metabolism and loved talking about all kinds of science. He was equally passionate about teaching it well. He was generous and cared so much about people. He will be sorely missed — he is already,” says Jennifer A. Surtees, PhD, professor and chair of biochemistry at the Jacobs School.

Brownie earned his PhD in biochemistry from Edinburgh University in Scotland, where he studied steroid 11b - hydroxylation and culminating in the discovery of the role of the cofactor NADPH in that critical reaction.

Following his PhD, Brownie was a research associate at Dundee University, conducting clinical endocrinology research that was critical to his later teaching endocrinology to medical and dental students. He then completed an NIH-sponsored training program at the University of Utah, where he helped develop a method for measuring testosterone in plasma by gas-liquid chromatography with electron capture.

From 1977 to 1989, Brownie chaired the Jacobs School’s Department of Biochemistry, helping to grow the department and recruiting several faculty members who would go on to occupy senior positions at UB and other institutions. Among those notable scientists was renowned geneticist J. Craig Venter, PhD, who’s conducted pioneering work on sequencing the human genome. Venter joined the biochemistry faculty, coming from the Department of Pharmacology. 

“Although Alastair had been at the university for a few years prior to my recruitment, he and I became faculty members in the Department of Biochemistry at about the same time,” recalls Daniel J. Kosman, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of biochemistry, whom Brownie later appointed as associate chair throughout his time as department chair.

“Alastair, along with our colleague, Professor Murray Ettinger, played a major role in the design and conduct of teaching biochemistry to the medical students, in all of the pedagogical paradigms that have graced the first year over the past several decades,” Kosman says, fondly remembering Brownie’s embrace of his Scottish heritage.

Brownie also co-authored a medical biochemistry textbook and co-founded an international biennial meeting on the adrenal cortex in 1984, which became an official satellite meeting of the Endocrine Society.

He was widely recognized for his research and teaching, receiving a Siegel Award for teaching excllence, the Stockton Kimball Award for research, and a Dean’s Award throughout his career. He was also an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society.