Professor Brewer is a policy scientist whose professional career began at the RAND Corporation in 1970, where he was a senior staff member of the social science department. He began at Yale in 1974 and held the Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser (1984-90) and Edwin W. Davis Chairs (1990-91). He also directed Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies in 1990-91. Between 1991 and 1998, he was the dean of the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources & Environment and also a professor in that school and in the Michigan Business School. In November 1997 he was appointed by His Majesty the King of Sweden to be the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Sciences for 1998-99. At the same time he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy. From 1999-2001 he was Professor of Resource Policy in the Energy and Resource Group (ERG) at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2001 he returned to Yale and reclaimed the Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser Chair.