[1] Brian Henderson was born near Doncaster, and was educated at Maltby Grammar School, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
He attended the University of Birmingham, obtaining his BSc (in physical metallurgy) in 1958 and PhD in 1960 with a thesis on "The Lattice Spacings of Alloys with Reference to Electronic Constitution".
[2] He became senior scientific officer at the Basic Ceramics Group at AERE (Harwell) in 1962, and joined the staff at Keele University in 1968, being promoted to Reader in Physics there in 1972.
Upon the retirement of Nobel laureate Ernest Walton from TCD in 1974, Henderson moved to Ireland and became Erasmus Smith's Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, a position he held for 10 years.
Henderson moved back to the UK in 1984, becoming Freeland Professor of Natural Philosophy at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.