She graduated with distinction in physics from University of Cape Town in 1929, and then studied in Berlin with the nuclear physicist Lise Meitner in 1930–32, publishing a prize-winning[4] paper on delta rays produced by alpha particles in 1933.

[5] In 1932, she returned to South Africa to marry the (later) renowned bacteriologist Max Sterne,[6] the inventor of the most effective livestock vaccine for anthrax.

Despite their growing scientific renown, in 1951, Max Sterne and Tikvah Alper were forced to leave South Africa because of their outspoken opposition to apartheid.

Tikvah found an (unpaid) research post at the MRC Radiobiology Laboratories at the Hammersmith Hospital, London, directed by Hal Gray, whom she had met on earlier visits.

The complexities of the effects of radiation on different cell types, and their interaction with other physiological and chemical processes began to be mapped out at this time, and continued through the 1950s and 60s.

Tikvah Alper continued an active professional life in retirement, culminating in a "brilliant lecture to the Radiation Research Society in Dallas, USA at the age of 83..".

[4][10] She died in Sarisbury, Hampshire, England, in 1995,[11] and was survived by her husband Max, sons Jonathan and Michael, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.