Frederick P. Cowan was an American health physicist and head of the Instrumentation and Health Physics Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Cowan grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts area. He attended Bowdoin College, then went on to Harvard University to complete his Ph.D. After Harvard, Cowan went on to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to teach. During World War II Dr. Cowan worked in radar countermeasures. This was followed by a stint at the Chrysler Corporation and finally he ended up at Brookhaven National Laboratory to lead the Health Physics Division. [1]