She was only the second woman to study geology at an Austrian university.[1] She earned her PhD in July 1929, when she was only 23 years old,[1] with a dissertation entitled "Die Productiden des Karbons von Nötsch im Gailtal".[1] Her dissertation was the first to reflect a redirection of study in the field away from mineralogy and crystallography and towards stratigraphy and palaeontology.[1]