[4] During World War I, Brierley took up in 1915 a post as assistant in plant pathology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the couple moved to Richmond, London.
[7] In 1934 Brierley became professor of agricultural botany at the University of Reading, as successor to John Percival.
[10] His work in 1918 clarified the life cycle of Botrytis cinerea, the "grey mould" fungus.
[11] In the 1920s, he with colleagues made standard a dilution plate technique for studying soil fungi.
[5] He translated the Pflanzliche Infektionslehre (1946) of Ernst Albert Gäumann as Principles of Plant Infection (1950).