[4][5] Her grandfather was William H. Besant, a mathematical fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
[6] Her younger brother, Stuart Milner-Barry, was a renowned chess player and would become a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during World War II.
[2][4][7] While an undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge,[2] Alda Milner-Barry covered her father's lessons at the University of Bangor while he was working as a translator in the British Admiralty.
[2] From 1920 to 1934, she was a lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham and, from 1934 to 1938, the tutor of Sidgwick Hall, Newnham College.
[10][11] She became vice-principal of the college, remaining in that position until her death in 1938, at the age of 44, at a nursing home in Cambridgeshire.