She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where Moore had taught many years previously, and completed her bachelor's degree there in mathematics in 1948, after having worked there as an assistant to John Robert Kline, who had been another of Moore's students at the University of Pennsylvania before becoming a faculty member there himself.
[1] Given this background, "she seemed predestined to pursue graduate work with Robert Lee Moore at the University of Texas",[1] as on Kline's recommendation she did.
This letter has been described as being "of considerable importance in the history of mathematics education".
Five years later, when the university promoted her to full professor, she became only one of four women with that rank in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
(A ninth student completed a doctorate in 1999, the year of Hamstrom's retirement.