Scientist

A throwaway remark about his technical skill gave Hopeton Overton Brown his stage name. Bunny Lee, impressed by the young assistant at King Tubby's, reportedly declared that the boy must be a scientist, and the name stuck. Born in 1960, Brown became a protégé of King Tubby, Osbourne Ruddock, and went on to rise to fame in the 1980s mixing dub music as Scientist, working alongside a circle that included Ruddock, Bunny Lee, Philip Smart, Pat Kelly and Prince Jammy.

He learned electronics from his father, a television and radio repairman, and began as an assistant at Tubby's Dromilly Road studio before mixing in the mid-1970s. Early 1980s albums for Greensleeves, playing on fictional battles with Space Invaders and Pac-Men, featured his most frequent collaborators, Roots Radics. In 1991 he mixed Reggae Español by Nando Boom, blending dancehall with Spanish lyrics; it is seen as a precursor to reggaeton. In 2016 Greensleeves dropped his name from a run of reissues after he alleged in court that albums had been released without his knowledge.