Robert Burton Brownell

Robert “Bob” Burton Brownell was born on September 28, 1936, in Huntsville, Alabama, to Claude Lewis Brownell and Marjorie Helen Probasco Brownell. He passed away from complications due to Parkinson’s disease on December 23, 2025. He had a distinguished career spanning government service, academia, and industry.

Bob’s father worked as the project accountant for the hydroelectric dams constructed by the Tennessee Valley Authority to bring electricity and economic development to isolated mountain communities in Appalachia. Bob, the baby of the family after his siblings Stuart Brownell, Virginia Baxter, Barbara Webster, and Helen Ledford, spent his early years in the Appalachian Mountains of Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina, where he acquired a lifelong love of camping, fishing, and hiking. He was handy with a pocket knife and shotgun, could navigate by the sun, and entertained friends, family, and even strangers playing guitar and harmonica around the campfire.

From his mother, Bob acquired a talent for painting and drawing, a favorite hobby throughout his life. His oil paintings, ink drawings, acrylics, and watercolors—depicting birds, family pets, mountain landscapes and beach scenes—adorn the homes of his loved ones. He also loved dogs, even his last dog Rocky – a headstrong Jack Russell who demanded that he wake up at 4:30am every morning.

Bob earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Duke University in 1958 through the Naval ROTC program and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, and was among the graduates of top universities who were hand-picked by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover for his elite “Nuclear Navy,” which designed the Navy’s first nuclear submarines. Rickover pinpointed him for a leadership position and sent him for special training at the leading sites of nuclear reactor development.

Bob left the Navy at the end of his service in 1962 to pursue a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of Virginia, completed in 1964. He then worked in the atomic energy division of Babcock & Wilcox for a year, but decided that he preferred an academic career, and taught Mathematics at Lynchburg College for a year before returning to U.Va. to pursue a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics. In 1970 he completed his dissertation, “On Bounded Feedback Gain and Bounded Impulse Controls,” involving an application of control theory at the intersection of mathematics and engineering, with relevance to nuclear systems. In 1968 he joined the faculty at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where his intellectual versatility allowed him to teach mathematics, computer science, and engineering. He was an admired mentor and inspired a generation of students who were impressed by his tales of real-world experience on the cutting edge of nuclear power. He was promoted to full professor in 1980.

In 1980, Bob transitioned to the private sector when Babcock & Wilcox hired him as a senior engineer, with his first task being to evaluate the failures of the control system at Three Mile Island which had contributed to the worst-ever accident in a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant. Following his retirement in 1997, Bob and his wife Judith traveled extensively around the U.S. in an RV before settling in Florida, then Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bob is survived by his loving wife of 48 years, Judith Suter Brownell, her daughters Laura Durant (and Chris) and Julia Sochacki (and Jim), and granddaughters Dasha Durant and Korry Sochacki. In recent years, Bob lived in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, with Judith and the Durant family. He is also survived by his daughters by his first wife (Claudia “Toy” Strite Brownell), Susan Brownell and Lynda Brus (and Michael); daughter-in-law Helen Brownell; and grandchildren Conor and Bridget Brownell, and Meredith and Samuel Brus. He is predeceased by his son Robert Burton Brownell, Jr.

Bob will be remembered for his intellectual curiosity, creative spirit, dad jokes, and deep love of family, learning, and nature.

Please consider a donation to St. Jude’s’s Children’s Research Hospital, at https://www.stjude.org/donate/donate-to-st-jude.html, “in Memory of Bob Brownell.”