Her father, Bernard Rolf, was a civil engineer who built docks and piers on the east coast.

She was in the Mathematics Club, German Club, Vice President of the class of 1916, a member of the Young Women's Christian Assn., was the alternate for the Graduate Fellowship while working at the Rockefeller Foundation, Business Manager of The Barnard Bulletin, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1920, Rolf earned her PhD in biological chemistry under the supervision of Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene, of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

[3] After graduating, Rolf continued to work with Levene at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City.

In 1922, two years after having received her PhD from Columbia, Rolf was raised to associate, then the highest non-tenured position for a scientist at Rockefeller.

[8][9] As of 2010, it had graduated 1536 practitioners, including some trained in Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Australia, in addition to the main program in Boulder, Colorado.

[11] Structural Integration, later known as Rolfing, is a type of manual therapy that claims to improve human biomechanical functioning.