In 1941, as a graduate student, she met Clifford Hugh Dowker, a Canadian topologist working as an instructor there.

Clifford also worked as a civilian adviser for the United States Air Force during World War II.

[3] In the period between 1948 and 1949, she did post-doctoral work at the Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey.

A few years after the war, McCarthyism became a common phenomenon in the academic world, with several of the Dowker couple's friends in the mathematical community harassed and one arrested.

[2] In 1951 Dowker was appointed as assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester,[4] and later went to the Imperial College London, where she was the first female reader within the department.