Michael Brown is a Professor of Geology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his BA and PhD from the University of Keele in the UK. Brown is a petrologist engaged in studies of high-grade metamorphism and crustal melting, and secular change. His research focuses on chemical and physical processes in the deep crust using observations from the scale of mineral grains to orogenic systems, and he combines quantitative petrology with structural geology, geochemistry and geochronology to investigate orogenic processes, particularly the transfer of mass and heat, and global tectonics. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Metamorphic Geology.