She majored in astronomy at Radcliffe College, after becoming interested in it through a freshman-year friend, and was mentored there by Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok and by Harlow Shapley.
Seven years later, in the early 1960s, they moved to Boulder, Colorado, so her husband could take a position at the National Bureau of Standards; she became a research fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics.
They moved again, a year later, to Washington DC, where her husband had a position at NASA; she became a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park, and began focusing more on astronomy education than on research.
[1] At Maryland, her work shifted to academic administration, initially as acting director of the astronomy program and eventually as an assistant vice chancellor.
She moved to Virginia Commonwealth University as dean of humanities and science, held the position for twelve years, and then prior to retiring became the director of a new program in environmental studies.