Brown was born on May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina, to 16-year-old Susie (née Behling; 1917–2004) and 21-year-old Joseph Gardner Brown (1912–1993) in a small wooden shack.
About a third of the way from Dubhe (the Big Dipper’s front bowl star) to Polaris (and a just a bit to the east) lies Giausar, the tail star of Western Draco the Dragon, to which Bayer assigned the Greek letter Lambda.