[1] Adam was born the youngest of three children near Highbury, North London, where her father was a teacher at Drayton Park School.

She became ill at the age of nine and spent a year at the Liverpool Open-Air Hospital to treat her skeletal tuberculosis of an elbow and rickets.

[1] On her release from hospital, Adam won a scholarship to Doncaster High School in South Yorkshire, where she gained a life-long passion for science and mathematics.

[1] She was appointed an assistant tutor at St. Hugh's, and also "taught astronomy courses, with an emphasis on astronavigation, to Royal Navy and RAF cadets".

"[1] She was a lecturer at the University of Oxford in the Department of Astrophysics from 1937–1979, and was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society from 11 March 1938.