Robert V. Brodine came to Purdue with a distinguished record of service in the Navy Air Corps. During his service from 1943 to 1945, he completed more than 20 combat missions and received the Navy Gold Star, the Air Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Having been forced to ditch at sea, he also was a member of the Navy's fabled Goldfish Club.

Brodine graduated from Purdue in 1949 and joined Gulf Oil's worldwide exploration operations. His 34-year career with Gulf was divided between research and operations and involved many foreign assignments. His primary technical expertise is in interpreting geophysical data. At Gulf he was also the acknowledged technical leader in initiating, developing, and applying methods of directly sensing anomalous physical properties as a means of detecting subsurface petroleum. In 1970, Brodine and other Gulf Oil scientists achieved success with the development of the seismic technology to directly detect natural gas reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico. Brodine was named vice president of exploration and production research in 1977 and served at Gulf's Pittsburgh Research Laboratories. During his tenure, Gulf pioneered the use of computer presentation of 3-D seismic data, the use of geophysical and geochemical technologies at sea, and the building of sensitive chromatographs to perform on-site analysis of shallow soil gas samples.

Brodine received Purdue's Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award in 1983. The following year he founded Microseeps, a limited partnership that applies direct detection technology to environmental needs.