She enrolled at Cornell University, and earned a master's degree in 1951. During her graduate studies, she studied the motions of 109 galaxies and made one of the first observations of deviations from Hubble flow (how the galaxies move apart from one another). She worked with astronomer Martha Carpenter on galactic dynamics, and studied under Philip Morrison, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman. Though the conclusion she came to – that there was an orbital motion of galaxies around a particular pole – was disproven, the idea that galaxies were moving held true and sparked further research. Her research also provided early evidence of the supergalactic plane. This information and the data she discovered was immensely controversial. After she struggled to be allowed to present her work at the American Astronomical Society despite being visibly pregnant, she was summarily rejected and the paper forgotten.