She studied at Radcliffe College, where she obtained her bachelor's degree in physics.
She married John J. Sopka in 1943, and the couple subsequently moved to Dayton, Ohio, where her husband worked with the Manhattan project until the end of the war.
[2] Sopka taught physics at Newark State Teachers College and later at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU).
She obtained her Ph.D. in history of science and education at Harvard University in 1976 with her dissertation entitled Quantum Physics in America: 1920–1935.
[7] Alice Armstrong,[8] Dorothy Heyworth,[9] In 1978, she interviewed Lucy Wilson[10][11] and Dorothy Weeks[12] In 1977 her subjects included Melba Phillips,[13] Janet Guernsey,[14] Edward Purcell,[15][16] Nicolaas Bloembergen,[17] Kenneth T. Bainbridge,[18][19] John H. Van Vleck,[20] Sidney Coleman,[21] and Gerald Holton[22] In 1976 she talked with Sheldon Glashow,[23] Norman Ramsey,[24] Jabez Curry Street,[25] and Edwin Kemble.