[1] As a student at Forest Hills High School in 1955, she received a Westinghouse Science Talent Search Award,[2] and met president Dwight D.

[3] Colman earned her bachelor's degree at Radcliffe College in 1959,[4] and completed doctoral studies at Harvard University in 1962, with Frank Westheimer as her advisor.

She was the Willis F. Harrington Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and director of the Chemistry-Biology Interface Graduate Program.

[6] In 1988, Colman represented the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), when testified at a Senate budget hearing in support of increased funding for the National Science Foundation.

[14] During college, Roberta Fishman married Robert W. Colman, a medical student, who had also won a Westinghouse Science Talent Search Award in the 1950s.