[1] For her scientific work, Karle received the Garvan–Olin Medal, Gregori Aminoff Prize, Bower Award, National Medal of Science, and the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award (which is the Navy's highest form of recognition to civilian employees).

She was born as Isabella Helen Lugoski in Detroit, Michigan, on December 2, 1921, the daughter of immigrants from Poland.

During her graduate work she met her future husband and scientific collaborator Jerome Karle; the two were both advised in their Ph.D. studies by Lawrence Brockway.

She developed the symbolic addition procedure that connects the theoretical "direct method" apparatus and actual X-ray diffraction data.

[5] In 1985, Jerome Karle was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with mathematician Herbert A. Hauptman, for developing direct methods for analyzing X-ray diffraction data.