[3][1] In 1957 she graduated from Harbord Collegiate Institute, a downtown public high school with predominantly Jewish students and a history of many earlier notable alumni.

[6] Freedhoff was the only woman in her year to major in physics, graduating with the highest marks and being awarded the Governor General's Gold Medal.

[6] Freedhoff was inspired by Jan Van Kranendonk, a theoretical physicist,[8] who encouraged her to undertake postgraduate studies under his supervision.

[6][11] She studied means of identifying molecular features of atoms trapped in metals with spectroscopy, work which was partly sponsored by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

[12][6][13] Other than a sabbatical year at the Department of Physics of Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa from 1986,[14][15] Freedhoff remained at York University until her retirement in 2005, having published over 40 research papers.

[1] Michal Freedhoff gained a doctorate in solid state chemistry,[24] and went on to serve as a US Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow in the office of Ed Markey.

[26][1] Helen Freedhoff's personal pastimes included reading, playing piano, solving KenKen puzzles, and yoga.

[1] Helen Freedhoff died suddenly on 10 June 2017 at the family's cottage in Muskoka, Ontario, a lakeside area near Toronto.