[1][2] After earning her matura in classics at the Töchterschule in Zürich, Grete Gujer studied chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Grete Kellenberger contributed to the development of new methods to prepare and analyse biological samples using an electron microscope, a new technique at the time.

[3][4][5] After Jean Weigle left for the California Institute of Technology in 1948, Grete Kellenberger took on an increasingly important role in the study of lambda phage and its mutations at the University of Geneva.

[7][8][9][10][11] It was Grete Kellenberger who gave Werner Arber, who carried out his PhD between 1954 and 1958, the conceptual basis and practices for his future studies in the genetics of bacteriophages.

Grete Kellenberger-Gujer continued to work in Kansas and later accepted a position as an independent researcher in a lab run by Lucien Caro at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.