Married to Smithsonian Institution paleobiologist G. Arthur Cooper for seventy years, she spent much of her life studying fossils alongside her husband.

[1] Josephine attended Mount Holyoke College, graduating in 1926 with a degree in geology and English.

[2] While raising their children, Cooper assisted her husband in his work collecting and identifying fossils at the Smithsonian.

[2] Although she never worked for the Smithsonian, those at the National Museum of Natural History would later say that "her contributions to understanding our paleontology collections were invaluable.

[4] Cooper began working in the 1950s at the Names Committee of the United States Geological Survey.