She graduated with a bachelor's degree in geography from the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. During WW II she worked as an assistant to Thomas Park on the Tribolium project at the University of Chicago.[2][3] She was the senior author of the 1999 article Phenological changes reflect climate change in Wisconsin,[4] which has over 700 citations.
She married the zoologist
William H. Elder in 1941. Working together, they studied wildlife in Illinois[5] and Missouri. They had two daughters and did field work together in Hawaii and Africa.[6][7] Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1971 she married the geologist Charles Bradley.[6][8][9]
^Elder, William H.; Elder, Nina L. (1970). "Social Groupings and Primate Associations of the Bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus)". Mammalia. 34 (3).
doi:
10.1515/mamm.1970.34.3.356.
S2CID83496723.