She attended Calumet High School and Massachusetts preparatory school, then graduated from Smith College in 1929 with high honors in chemistry.[1] She then took a break from schooling, spending a year working at Yale University as a research technician,[3] followed by four years researching acid-base imbalance in psychiatric patients at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital.[2] She began doctoral studies in physiological chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in 1936.[1] In 1939, she graduated with a Ph.D for thesis work on the role of the adrenal cortex in ion regulation.[4]