[2] After an education and an early career as a lexicographer in Weimar Germany, Brink emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1938.

During a visit to Oriel College, Oxford, in 1928, Brink had the opportunity to familiarise himself with the British academia and the work of A. E.

[3] He obtained his doctorate in 1933 with a dissertation entitled Stil und Form der pseudaristotelischen Magna moralia.

[4] In the aftermath of Adolf Hitler's seizure of power, Brink began to seek employment outside of Germany.

[6] After only three years at Liverpool, Brink was made Kennedy Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge in 1954, a post he held until his retirement in 1974.

At a time when verse and prose composition still occupied a central place in the study of the Classics, Brink became a leading voice for the shift towards literary critic modes of scholarship.

[8][9] Brink died on March 2, 1994, in Cambridge, where he and his wife are commemorated in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground.