[1] While working as a teacher at Mount Barker High School, Nell wrote a paper on Cainozoic molluscs, which was rewarded with the Tate Memorial Medal from the University of Adelaide in 1931.
Irene Crespin, palaeontologist with the Commonwealth government, moved from Melbourne to Canberra, and employed Nell Ludbrook as an Assistant Geologist from 1942 to 1949, working on the statistics of minerals for the war effort for the Department of Mines.
[1][7] In 1950, Ludbrook travelled to England to study molluscs at the Imperial College of Science at the British Museum (Natural History), while her husband was away for work.
Wallis Ludbrook died in 1951,[8] and Nell was encouraged by her husband's family to remain in England and take her PhD[1] in Pliocene molluscs of the Adelaide plains, at the University of London.
After graduation in 1952, Ludbrook returned to Australia and began work as a Technical Information Officer for the South Australian Department of Mines.