She was born in Davenport, Iowa on June 11, 1896 to Ralph Warren Cram (1869-1952) and Mary Belle Laventure (1874-1948). She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1919. She was awarded her Ph.D. from George Washington University in 1925. In 1920 became a zoologist for the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) specializing in the parasites of poultry. In 1936 she went to work for the Zoology Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. She died in San Diego, California on February 9, 1957.