While residing with his father at Lincoln's Inn Fields, he gained some knowledge of natural history and an interest in fossils from visits to the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, at a time when William Clift was curator.
[1] Proceeding to Emmanuel College, Cambridge,[2] Brodie came under the influence of Adam Sedgwick, and devoted his time to geology.
Entering the church in 1838, he was curate at Wylye in Wiltshire, and for a short time at Steeple Claydon in Buckinghamshire, becoming later rector of Down Hatherley in Gloucestershire, and finally (1855) vicar of Rowington in Warwickshire, and rural dean.
[1] At Cambridge Brodie obtained fossil shells from the Pleistocene deposit at Barnwell, Northamptonshire;[1] in the Vale of Wardour he discovered in Purbeck Beds the isopod named by Henri Milne-Edwards[3] Archaeoniscus Brodiei; in Buckinghamshire he described the outliers of Purbeck and Portland Beds; and in the Vale of Gloucester the lias and oolites claimed his attention.
At present the best exposure of his Purbeck beds for collecting fossil insects is at Teffont Evias Quarry / Lane Cutting.