For a short period after graduation, he worked as a mathematician on oceanographic topics for offices of the United States Navy in Maryland and Connecticut.
[4] During his time at MIT-WHOI, Bryden completed and published work on a number of topics including water mass properties,[5] Mediterranean outflow[6] and geostrophy.
[7] He was supervised initially by Henry Stommel and then principally by Nick Fofonoff, and his thesis title was "Momentum, Mass, Heat, and Vorticity Balances from Oceanic Measurements of Current and Temperature".
[8] Upon competing his doctoral thesis, Bryden briefly moved to Oregon State University to work as a post-doctoral researcher, before returning to WHOI in 1977.
[14] In 2009, he won the Prince Albert I Medal "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to understanding the ocean's role in the global climate system".