Browne was one of the first women of color in the US to get a doctorate in mathematics. She earned her doctorate in 1949 from the University of Michigan, having worked on it during many summers while teaching at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas and at the University of Michigan. Her love for mathematics came from her father who had excelled in arithmetic during two years of college and who shared his love of mathematics with his children.

After earning her doctorate, Browne began teaching at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in Durham, North Carolina, where she taught for thirty years, from 1949 to 1979.

She won a Ford Foundation fellowship in 1952 to study combinational topology at Cambridge University and traveled throughout Europe during her fellowship year. She received a National Science Foundation Faculty Fellow in 1958 to study numerical analysis and computing at the University of California at Los Angeles and won a similar fellowship to study differential topology at Columbia University in 1965.

Under Browne's leadership, NCCU became the first predominantly black institution to be awarded a National Science Foundation grant for a summer institute for secondary teachers. She led the mathematics section of these summer institutes for thirteen years. She also obtained a grant from the Shell oil company to give awards to outstanding students in the mathematics department at NCCU.

Four years before her retirement from NCCU, Browne became the first recipient of the W.W. Rankin Memorial Award for Excellence in Mathematics Education given by the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

During the years before she died in 1979, she used her own money to provide financial aid to many gifted young people so that they could pursue their education. Browne mentored students pursuing their study of mathematics and helped many to complete their doctorate in the field.

Marjorie Lee Browne --- trail blazer, scholar, philanthropist, role model and mentor. Let's honor her by passing on what she did for so many.