Stephen Brunauer

Stephen Brunauer (February 12, 1903 – July 6, 1986) was an American research chemist, government scientist, and university teacher. He resigned from his position with the U.S. Navy during the McCarthy era, when he found it impossible to refute anonymous charges that he was disloyal to the U.S.

Stephen Brunauer was born István Brunauer on February 12, 1903, to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. His father was blind and his mother worked as a seamstress. He emigrated to the United States in 1921 and attended City College of New York and Columbia University, majoring in English and chemistry. He received his A.B. from Columbia in 1925. He pursued graduate studies in chemistry and engineering, earning his master's degree in 1929 from George Washington University, where he was a student of Edward Teller, who later described his confidence in asserting his theories and challenging his teachers. While a student, he belonged briefly to the Young Workers' League, a Communist front organization. He later described it as "a glorified social club with dances and picnics and infrequent participation in picket lines and strikes."

He became an American citizen around 1925 and began working for the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., in 1928. He married Esther Delia Caukin in 1931, an expert in international relations who worked for the American Association of University Women and, after 1944, for the U.S. State Department. They lived in Washington, D.C., with the exception of one year of living in Baltimore while he earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1933. They had a son in 1934, who died December 1937, and two daughters in 1938 and 1942. His doctoral thesis led to the development of BET theory, based on work he did with Paul H. Emmett and Edward Teller. He left the Department of Agriculture following the attack on Pearl Harbor and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and by 1942 was heading its high explosives research group in the Bureau of Ordnance. He recruited Albert Einstein as a consultant to the Navy in 1943. Einstein had corresponded with Esther Brunauer before the war when he was trying to help German academics find employment in the U.S.

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