Ida Tacke was born in Lackhausen (nowadays a part of the city of Wesel) in the northern Rhine region in 1896. She described how she picked her path of study by stating, "since I did not want to be a teacher at all, and research and industry employed proportionally fewer physicists at that time, I decided to become a chemist– a decision that was welcomed by my father who owned a small varnish factory in the Lower Rhine region." She chose to attend the Technical University of Berlin because she was drawn to its long and demanding programs. She entered the school in 1915, six years after women were allowed to study in all of Berlin's universities. Nine out of the eighty-five members of her class studied chemistry. In 1918, she graduated from the University with a degree in chemical and metallurgical engineering, specifically on higher aliphatic fatty acid anhydrides. She was one of the first women in Germany to study chemistry, and she was a part of one of the first generations of female students in Germany. In addition, the percent of women studying chemistry increased from 3% before World War I to 35% during the war. After graduating, she worked in the chemistry laboratory of the Berlin turbine factory of AEG, which is a company that is affiliated with General Electric in the United States.
The building she worked in, designed by Peter Behrens, was world-famous and resembled a turbine. She met her husband, Walter Noddack, at the Technical University of Berlin while he was working as a researcher. They were married in 1926.  Both before and after their marriage they worked as partners, an "Arbeitsgemeinschaft" or "work unit."