Mary Louise Norrie-Brown was born on July 4, 1927, in Honolulu, Hawaii. She passed away on December 2, 1998, in Los Angeles, California, on her way home from Australia. The cause of death was assumed to be an embolism. Elected for the third time as Director of the Northwest Division of the Amateur Radio Relay League, she had just spent several days on Lord Howe Island where she had engaged in a variety of transmissions with other operators.

A graduate of South Pasadena High School, Mary Lou Norrie enrolled at the University of California in 1945 and selected mathematics as her major with the intention of teaching that subject. She had been active in sports during her high school days and decided to "minor" in physical education. Subsequently she chose that field of study as her major, stating in an interview she gave in 1982: "I am a person with many interests, and physical education cuts across numerous fields; it seemed a logical choice." The years from 1946 to 1948 were spent in Germany, where she completed a year of studies at Heidelberg University. She then returned to Berkeley and received an A.B. degree in 1951. An M.A. degree was awarded in 1952, and she was invited to serve as a junior Supervisor of Physical Education (1952-1955). In that capacity she taught a variety of physical activity courses. Her special expertise was in aquatics and fencing.

A short period as a teacher at San Leandro High School ensued. Having already completed several summer sessions at Teachers College, Columbia University, Norrie-Brown relocated to New York in 1957 to pursue the doctorate in educational psychology.

She taught at Columbia and then at the University of Pittsburgh while completing her dissertation on "Age Differences in the Acquisition of a Complex Gross Motor Skill." In July 1962 she returned to Berkeley as Acting Assistant Professor and moved steadily through the ranks. Her research interests were focused around relationships between measures of kinesthesia and motor performance, age differences in the acquisition of motor skills, and the relationship between kinesthetic abilities and gross motor task performance. In her area of specialization, motor learning, she mentored many graduate students. She taught "Psychological Bases of Physical Activity," a course that included such physical correlates of skilled performance as perception and reaction-time as well as motivation, personality variables, and competition as factors of physical activity. She also taught what was then called "Adapted Physical Education." This course included such things as causes, incidence, and effects of physical disabilities that may affect participation in a variety of activities and evaluated programs designed to lead to optimum function of the handicapped.

At the same time she continued her earlier interest in physical activities, especially fencing. In 1967, she was invited to teach "Intermediate Fencing Skills and Teaching Techniques" at the California Physical Education Workshop. The course was sponsored by the California State Department of Education and California Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation to provide in-service education for women teaching in secondary schools. She was active with several professional organizations in her field. Among her contributions were: chair of the Research Section of the California Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation; secretary of the Research Consortium of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and associate editor of The Research Quarterly.

Norrie-Brown also gave unstintingly of her time to the Berkeley campus. A member of the Committee on Educational Policy (19771982), Committee on Courses of Instruction (1971-1976), and ombudsperson (1971-73), she also served on the University Committee on Educational Policy (1979-1982). She was corresponding secretary (1968-1971) and president (1971-73) of the Women's Faculty Club. From 1973 to 1982 she served as chair of the former Department of Physical Education--the first woman to hold that position. Her personal interests ranged from the natural sciences (she was a natural science docent at the Oakland Museum), to music (she was an accomplished recorder player), to the out-of-doors. In her younger years she had been an avid backpacker; she also owned and sailed a 23-foot yacht. Following her retirement, Norrie-Brown relocated to the State of Washington where she lived with her husband, Robert R. Brown, a professor of physics. During retirement she maintained a very active life-style and traveled tens of thousands of miles to pursue her interests in amateur radio. Her visits took her to islands in the South Seas (e.g., Wallace Island and Fiji), to Russia, and elsewhere. She was extremely generous with her resources and her time, contributing her radio expertise in emergency situations, establishing scholarships, and welcoming to her home friends and acquaintances from the diverse regions to which she had traveled.

She is survived by her husband, Robert R. Brown, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at Berkeley.