Mr. Browne was born and raised in North Carolina, and educated in schools in West Virginia, including West Virginia State College (BS, 1944) and at Syracuse University (MS, 1960). After moving to Pasadena he taught chemistry at Muir and Blair High Schools for many years, he was recruited to Caltech in 1971 to serve as Director of Caltech Secondary Schools Relations Office, CalTech, CA, assisting to identify and bring local students, including minorities, to Caltech. Lee Browne was always at Caltech in one way or another. He often came to the school's lecture series and taught the children of the faculty. In fact, Lee Browne and his wife were the only two African Americans in the audience when Dr. Martin King, Jr. came to speak at Caltech on February 25, 1958. Lee felt that something needed to be done about the lack of cultural awareness at the institute. He helped to create the Student Support Program (SSP) which was designed to help underrepresented students to survive at Caltech. For six weeks before the school year began, about ten students, who were selected from the freshman class, attended an intense program in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and English. Over the years, the SSP proved to be very effective. Whereas only 17% of all incoming underrepresented students were graduated from Caltech, 58% of all underrepresented students that attended the program graduated.