[2] Whitten "fell madly in love" with physics at age 16,[3] and graduated from Carleton College in 1968.
[1] She received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester in 1977,[3] with the dissertation On Mechanical Quantum Measuring Processes, supervised by Gérard G.
[4] Her doctoral research applied algebraic statistical mechanics to computational atomic physics,[3][1] a combination of topics she continued to study for many years.
[3] After teaching at Miami University and working as a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,[2] she joined the Physics Department at Colorado College as the first woman in its faculty.
[1] Whitten is the 2018 recipient of the Oersted Medal of the American Association of Physics Teachers.