She completed doctoral studies in physics at the University of North Carolina in 1938, with a dissertation titled "Statistical Behavior of Geiger-Müller Tube Counters.

[2] Hodge left academia to be a physicist with the United States Weather Bureau from 1942 to 1966, and with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration from 1966 to 1977.

[2] In 1963, she became chief of the Atmosphere Section of the Physical Science Laboratory at the National Weather Service.

[8] She worked on measurement instruments,[9] and developed balloon-borne sensors for studying the ozone layer.

"She's an expert on the response of the instrument's sensors under various conditions and the corrections needed to make the readings accurate," explained a colleague in 1972.