[3] She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1936, where she had majored in archaeology and was a student of historian Rhys Carpenter and archaeologist Mary Hamilton Swindler.
Whilst studying, she learned the Greek language, was part of the “Oxford Movement" and travelled with her fellow students to Egypt and Turkey, even swimming the Hellespont in Istanbul.
[2] She was forced to leave Greece at the end of 1938 due to the ongoing tensions in the lead up to World War II.
[2] In 1942 she published an article in Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, regarding Roman relief bowls that had been excavated during her work at Corinth.
While living there, she volunteered as a docent in the Princeton University Art Museum and instituted an annual celebration of Greek Independence Day which was held at her home.
[1] Doreen married the astronomer Lyman Spitzer on June 29, 1940, and they had four children: Nicholas, Dionis, Sarah, and Lydia.