[3] She was educated at Blackheath High School[4] and graduated in 1905 from Girton College, Cambridge, where she studied mathematics.

[3] This was followed by an assignment in 1914 as a teacher at Rupert's Land Ladies' College, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she stayed for two years.

[1][4] After World War I, when the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919 meant loss of employment for many skilled women engineers, the Women's Engineering Society was formed in 1919, and Margaret Rowbotham was a founding signatory and member alongside Rachel Parsons; Lady Katharine Parsons; Margaret, Lady Moir; Laura Annie Willson and Janetta Mary Ornsby.

[1] Following their retirement, Rowbotham lived in Devon, with Margaret Partridge, and encouraged the members of their local Women's Institute to wire the village hall for electricity.

On 15 September 1962, the couple wrote a letter of "grandmotherly advice" on the joys of retirement to their fellow women engineers in WES, and listed designing and supervising the building of a sports pavilion, and the conversion of a local stately home into a boys' school as well as serving on the Parish Council as part of their retirement activity.