A Huntsville, Alabama native, Mike Brown attended and graduated from
Virgil I. Grissom High School in 1983. Four years later, he earned his
A.B. in physics from Princeton University, where he was a member of the
Princeton Tower Club and completed his graduate studies at the
University of California, Berkeley where he earned an M.Sc. and Ph.D.
in astronomy.
Brown is famous for his surveys for distant objects orbiting the Sun.
His team has found many objects, including Eris, which may be larger
than Pluto, and is one of a number of dwarf planets in the Solar
System; 90377 Sedna, a planetoid thought to be the first inner Oort
cloud object; and 90482 Orcus.
His team also informally named Eris and its moon Dysnomia with the
names Xena and Gabrielle, respectively, after the two main characters
of
_Xena: Warrior Princess (TV Series 1995-2001)_.