Dan Brown
Dan Brown was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, the eldest of three children. Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher emeritus of mathematics, and wrote textbooks from 1968 until his retirement in 1982. Both of Brown's parents are also singer/musicians and served as church choir masters, with his mother serving as church organist. Brown was raised as an Episcopalian.
Brown's interest in secrets and puzzles stems from their presence in his household as a child, where codes and ciphers were the lynchpin tying together the mathematics, music and languages in which his parents worked. The young Brown spent hours working out anagrams and crossword puzzles, and he and his siblings participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and holidays. On Christmas, for example, Brown and his siblings would not find gifts under the tree, but would follow a treasure map with codes and clues throughout their house and even around town in order to find their hiding place. Brown's relationship with his father inspired that of Sophie Neveu and Jacques Sauniere in The Da Vinci Code, and Chapter 23 of that novel was inspired by one of his childhood treasure hunts.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash, sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled in an art history course at the University of Seville. Brown graduated from Amherst in 1986.
Works
Digital Fortress, 1998
Angels & Demons, 2000
Deception Point, 2001
The Da Vinci Code, 2003
The Lost Symbol, 2009
