Thomas Messinger Drown was born on March 19, 1842, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1862. After a brief period of practice as a physician, he turned to chemistry as his life work. He went to Germany to study chemistry in Freiberg, Saxony, and mining at the University of Heidelberg. From 1869 to 1870, he was an instructor of metallurgy at Harvard University. In 1870, he started a consulting business in Philadelphia. In 1873, he was elected Secretary of the American Institute of Mining Engineers and retained that position until his resignation in 1883. From 1874 to 1881, he was a professor of Analytical Chemistry at Lafayette College. In 1885, he accepted a professorship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1895, he proceeded to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he was made its President in 1897. The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Columbia University in 1895. He was elected an honorary member of the Berzelius Society of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1886. In 1908, Lehigh University opened Drown Hall which now houses Lehigh's English Department.

In 1869, he married Helen Leighton. He died on November 15, 1904, in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.