[3][4][5] She was instrumental in founding the British Astronomical Association and was also one of the first women Fellows of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Her father, Thomas Brown, introduced her to science, including observing sunspots and taking meteorological measurements, notably, of rainfall.

Brown was one of three women proposed for fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1892, but all three controversially failed to attract sufficient votes for election (the other two were Alice Everett and Annie Russell; similarly, the nomination of Isis Pogson had been rejected in 1886).

[10] Elizabeth Brown travelled widely to seek for solar eclipses, an adventure she describes in her work In Pursuit of a Shadow (1887).

The title of the book reveals the influence of the earlier Quaker meteorologist Luke Howard who famously used the phrase to describe his work on clouds.