She had wide interests, studying marine organisms, genetics, and palaeontology, and collaborated with Cambridge geneticist William Bateson.
An alumna of Alexandra College, Dublin, she was recognized as a role model for women in higher education in Ireland and England.
She received an early education at Alexandra School and College in Dublin, and then attended Newnham College, Cambridge on a Gilchrist scholarship in 1897, where she took first class honours in both part I and part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos exam, completing a zoology degree in 1901.
She led research on fossils in collaboration with her father,[4] and they were the first people to use the serial sectioning device he invented to look at the structure of a dicynodont skull.
[5] At Cambridge she was part of an active research group led by William Bateson, and she studied the genetics of colouration in guinea pigs and moth wings.