[1] As a high school student in Canton, Pennsylvania,[2] Brenchley won a regional science fair competition, with a project about the way Myxomycetes slime mold reacts to light.

[5] She completed doctoral work at the University of California, Davis in 1970,[6] with a dissertation titled "An Investigation of Cold-Sensitive Mutants of Salmonella typhimurium LT2 with altered macromolecular synthesis.

"[7] After a one-year post-doctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brenchley joined the microbiology department at Penn State in 1971 as an assistant professor.

[6] TheBrenchley Endowment, established by Brenchley in her last year (2019), supports programming on WPSU-FM, the public radio station at Penn State.

[15] She wanted the fund to be used to ensure the continuation of “Morning Edition” and “Science Friday,” two programs produced by NPR, that she said are her "longtime companions in daily life".