She studied chemistry at New York University, attending evening courses while working, and earned a bachelor's degree in 1941.
Following the war, she studied philosophy at the University of Iowa, completing a Ph.D. supervised by Gustav Bergmann in 1947, on the subject of John Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.
[1][2] Upon finishing her PhD, she was offered a professorship at the University of Minnesota, where she worked from 1947 to 1974, eventually rising to chair of the philosophy department (1967–1970) and dean of the graduate school (1972–1974).
She stepped down from administration in 1981, retired in 1983, and died later that year in Menlo Park, California.
Later in her career, she also wrote on the philosophy of mind, defending a form of psychophysical parallelism.