George Brown Jr. was one of California's longest-serving members of Congress, representing much of inland Southern California for 14 terms until he died in 1999 in office at age 79.
Democrat Brown specialized in environmental and technological issues, including authorship of the Environmental Protection Agency, and survived several close elections late in his career as the region's politics became more conservative.
Brown's political career, extending from his first position as mayor of Monterey Park to his long-time chairmanship of the House Science Committee, is contained now in 525 boxes and nine filing cabinets of his papers. And his widow, Marta, has donated those papers to the University of California, Riverside.
"I donated George's papers to the university so students could have access to them, as well as policymakers," she said in a statement. "So much of the work he was involved in during the 1960s and '70s is relevant now, particularly science and technology, and alternative energy. He was looking at other ways of generating energy because he could see that we would run out of natural resources."
AP file photo, 1996 / San Bernardino County Sun, Gabriel Acosta
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