Dr. Brody received a B.S. degree in Zoology at Colorado State University, a M.S. in Functional Vertebrate Anatomy at the University of Illinois, and then a Ph.D. in Cell Biology at Colorado State in 1969.  He then carried out three years of Post-doctoral study at Ohio State University before accepting his first faculty position as an Assistant Professor in the Pathology Department at the University of Vermont in 1978.   After six years in Vermont, Dr. Brody moved to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).  As one the National Institutes of Health, this is where Dr. Brody began his fundamental research on the mechanisms through inhaled environmental agents causing lung disease.  This also is where he began his own studies designed to explain how asbestos fibers cause fibrogenic and neoplastic diseases.  While at the NIH, Dr. Brody taught at Duke, the University of North Carolina and at North Carolina State University.  After 15 years at the NIEHS, where Dr. Brody was head of the Lung Pathology Laboratory, he accepted the position as Professor of Pathology at Tulane in 1993.  In 1999, he was promoted to Vice Chair of the Department.

Dr. Brody was the first investigator to establish that inhaled asbestos fibers are translocated to the interstitial compartments of the lung by active uptake of the alveolar epithelial lining cells.  His work showed that lung macrophages are attracted to asbestos fibers through the activation of the 5th component of complement on alveolar surfaces. More recently, Dr. Brody's work has demonstrated that peptide factors that provide positive and negative growth signals for epithelial and mesenchymal cells are stimulated by inhaled asbestos fibers, providing a mechanism for the increased cell proliferation and matrix production that are the hallmarks of asbestosis.