William Y. Brown (born August 13, 1948) is a zoologist and attorney, currently the chief environmental officer of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the Department of the Interior. He is a former nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former science advisor to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, a former president of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, a former president of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a former president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He is the author of the novels "Valley of the Scorpion" and "Ruffner's Cave".