[1][2] She was born Fay Ajzenberg on 13 February 1926 in Berlin, Germany to a Polish Jewish family from Russian Empire.

Her father, Moisei Abramovich Aisenberg (Polish: Mojzesz Ajzenberg), was a mining engineer who studied at the St. Petersburg School of Mines and her mother, Olga Ajzenberg née Naiditch, was a pianist and mezzo-soprano who studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Music.

Her father worked as a chemical engineer in a sugar beet factory owned by her uncle Isaac Naiditch in Lieusaint, Seine-et-Marne, France.

They took a tortuous route through Spain, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba before they settled in New York City in April 1941.

[4] She received her MS in 1949 and her PhD in physics in 1952 with a dissertation titled "Energy levels of some light nuclei and their classification.

"[5] Following graduation, Ajzenberg was a lecturer at Smith College and a visiting fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She was hired as an assistant professor of physics at Boston University, but the dean lowered her salary 15 percent when he learned Ajzenberg was a woman.

[10] In 1962, using the bubble chamber at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Selove discovered a meson he named the fayon (f2) after her.