Born in Lagrange, Illinois (USA) in 1908, Brown was educated at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, (B.A. 1929) and achieved his doctorate at Yale University (Ph.D. 1938). He worked as Assistant Professor of Classics there until the United States entered World War II, during which he served the Office of War Information in Syria and Lebanon; in 1945 he became General Director of Antiquities of the Republic of Syria.
Brown first came to Rome and to the American Academy in 1931 as a graduate student of Yale University. Early as fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Brown went to Syria in 1932 to excavate at Dura-Europos with the joint Yale University- Académie des Inscriptions (France) under the direction of Franz Cumont and Michael Rostovtzeff and became field director at Dura in 1935.
His return to the American Academy in Rome from Syria in 1947 marked the beginning of the Academy's involvement in archaeological fieldwork in Italy. The excavations of the Latin colony of Cosa (Ansedonia) in southwestern Tuscany, has become a referring site for the archaeology of Latin colonies and mid-Republican Rome itself. Brown remained at the Academy as Professor in Charge of the Classical School and Director of Excavations from 1947-1952. He returned to Yale as Professor of Classics, where in addition to his teaching responsibilities he continued to collaborate in the publication of Dura- Europos and in the American Schools of Oriental Research. He was Secretary of ASOR, 1955-1962, Master of Jonathan Edwards College, 1953-1956, and in collaboration with his Yale colleagues, Professors Lawrence Richardson, Jr. and Emeline Richardson, produced the second volume of the Cosa excavation reports, “The Temples of the Arx”.
A generation of American Classical archaeologists and historians grew up under Brown at Cosa; notable among them are Lawrence Richardson, Jr., Emeline Hill Richardson, Russell T. Scott, and Stephen L. Dyson.
In the same period he served the Archaeological Institute of America as Trustee and Norton Lecturer. In 1963, however, Brown left Yale to return permanently to the American Academy in Rome, resuming the positions of Professor in Charge and Director of Excavations. In 1965-1969 he obtained the directorship of the Academy in Rome. Nevertheless these years saw him most active both in Rome and in Ansedonia. In 1963 he made soundings in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. Invited by the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome, he returned in 1964 to Regia in the Roman Forum, where he had studied during his years as a fellow. After the work of Giacomo Boni at the turn of the century, Brown's excavation of Regia was considered the most substantial evidence for early organization and development of the Forum. In 1965 he resumed work at Cosa supervising the fieldwork, the preparation of additional publications of the Cosa series, the design, the construction, and the outfitting of the site museum, which since 1981 became the National Museum of Cosa.
He also collaborated with the works of other American archaeologists in Italy and Yugoslavia, as well as the corpus of Roman mosaics in North Africa and the international project to safeguard the Punic and Roman antiquities of Carthage. In 1966-1967 while Director of the Academy, he was also President of the International Union of the Institutes of Archaeology, History, and the History of Art in Rome. Throughout this year in Rome he was active in the affairs of the International Association for Classical Archaeology.
Having resigned the directorship of the Academy in 1969, Brown remained Professor in Charge of the Classical School until his retirement in 1976, when he received the Academy's Medal of Merit for many years of outstanding service. He continued to serve the Academy, and as Lecturer in 1979, he wrote the book "Cosa: The Making of a Roman Town" (1980) and as leader of a summer seminar sponsored by the N.E.H. he wrote a book: "The early colonies of Rome", (1980). In 1982 he was Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery in Washington where he continued to work on Vitruvius and returned to the study of the architecture of the Hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene at Nemrud Dagh, a project he had worked for ASOR in the 1950s. His last years in Rome werededicated to the preparation of final reports on the excavations in the forum of Cosa and Regia in the Roman Forum. On April 21, 1983, he was honored for his service to Italian archaeology by the city of Rome as “Cultore di Roma”.
In Italy he was a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of the Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in Napoli, the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici (Firenze), member of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. In America he was a member of ASOR, Archaeological Institute of America and of the American Philological Association. In March 1987 Frank Brown took leave of Rome and the American Academy to join his wife of 50 years, the former Jaquelin Goddard, in Florida. He died in Florida on February 28, 1988.Sources:
R. T. Scott, "Frank Edward Brown, 1908-1988."

American Journal of Archaeology, 92 (1988).

Architecture, Roman
Roman, Forum
Rome (city) antiquities