Cupp was born on March 30, 1904, which was the day Easter holiday is celebrated,[1] in Neola, Iowa.
[6] Cupp both conducted research at Scripps and taught classes in phytoplankton ecology with W.E.
[7] The director of Scripps, Harald Sverdrup, had positive reviews of Cupp's work, but in 1939 he fired Cupp because he decided her research did not match the research goals of the institution.
Sverdrup replaced Cupp with Marston Sargent who had arrived at Scripps a year earlier.
[8] After Scripps, Cupp worked with the Navy from 1940 until 1943,[3] and then became a teacher at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in City Heights, California.