Born into a conservative family, she obtained her master's degree from Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Tiruchirapalli in 1974 and joined the Department of Theoretical Physics.

Although her health deteriorated due to cancer she published five publications on the relativistic wave equations in external fields and completed her requirements for Ph.D., describing large classes of relativistic equations previously unknown to the scientific community.

[3][1] After meeting her husband, and marrying in 1978, B. Vijayalakshmi slowly became more involved in communist left movements as time would allow, with her beliefs shifting into atheism.

It was during her studies in quantum mechanics that she was diagnosed with widespread stomach and abdominal cancer, eventually keeping her to a wheelchair, but persisted with her work.

[2][3] Sashi Kumar created a documentary about her life called "Vijayalakshmi: The Story of a Young Woman with Cancer".