Kate Brown (professor)

Kate Brown is a Professor of History at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. She is the author of A Biography of No Place (Harvard 2004), which won the American Historical Association’s International European History Prize for the Best Book. Brown’s most recent book is Plutopia, a history of the world’s first two American and Soviet “plutonium cities”, (Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia), published by Oxford University Press in 2013. These were the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium for use in cold war atomic bombs. Brown is currently working on a book called Being There, which explores the history of blighted communities which have been “silenced or destroyed”. Brown has received many research grants and written many articles.

Plutopia

Richland, Washington was the first city established to support plutonium production at the nearby Hanford nuclear site, to power the American nuclear weapons arsenals. Ozersk, Russia supported plutonium production to power the Soviet nuclear arsenals at the Mayak nuclear plant. These were the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium for use in cold war atomic bombs.