[5] That fall, she began her higher education at Women's University of Saint Petersburg, where she took science and math-related classes.

[5] In 1902, Gernet received a PhD for her thesis Untersuchung zur Variationsrechnung (On One New Method in the Variation of Calculus), written at the University of Göttingen[5] in Germany.

She was the second female doctoral candidate to study under the instruction of David Hilbert,[5][6][7] Anne Bosworth having been the first.

In her thesis, Gernet extended the calculus of variations and generalized Hilbert's independence theorem to the case of two unknown functions.

[4][10] On January 1, 1943, Gernet died in St. Petersburg during the blockades of the Siege of Leningrad and was buried in the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery.