Horace Plessay (Horrie) Brown was born on 7 December 1916 in Melbourne. Brown was educated at Caulfield Grammar School (dux 1933) and at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, graduating with first-class honours in his economics subjects (BA, 1938). In 1938 Brown spent a term as an economics lecturer at the University of Western Australia before returning to Melbourne in October to take a post with the Commonwealth Grants Commission in October 1938. On 27 March 1941 he joined the Research Section, Bureau of Census and Statistics, Department of the Treasury in Canberra. Brown was Secretary of the Commonwealth Committee on Uniform Taxation and was on the Advisory Committee on Financial and Economic Policy. Brown assisted with the introduction of 'pay-as-you-earn' income taxation, and was largely responsible for drawing up the pioneering national income and expenditure papers of 1944-45 to 1948-49. In 1947 he was promoted to Director of Research, and later accepted a Readership in Economic Statistics at the Research School of Social Sciences, ANU. In 1952 he was elected to the International Statistical Institute, and acted as expert witness for the ACTU in the basic wage case of 1952-53, and again in the 1970 national wage case. Brown died in Canberra on 30 January 1971.