Russell was born on May 6, 1905, on the family farm in
Crown Point, New York. In 1922, she entered
Cornell University, and received her
B.S. and
M.S. degrees in 1926 and 1927, respectively, and her
Ph.D. in 1931. In 1927 she began working for the
US Department of Agriculture as a laboratory assistant, mounting
scale insects. In 1929 she was promoted to Junior Entomologist, in 1938 to Assistant Entomologist, in 1944 to Associate Entomologist, in 1946 to Entomologist, in 1953 to Senior Entomologist, and in 1962 to Research Entomologist. She determined thousands of
aphid,
psyllid,
whitefly, and
scale insect specimens for use in quarantine programs, pest control, regulatory entomology, and systematics research, and clarified numerous aphid species identification and nomenclatural problems, many involving agricultural pests. During and after her 48-year career with the USDA she published a total of 106 scientific papers, including descriptions of 84 new species of
pit scales, 63 species and four genera of
whiteflies, and two species of
psyllids. An active member of the
Biological Society of Washington, the
Entomological Society of Florida, and the
Washington Academy of Sciences, she also spent much time helping others, including serving on graduate student committees as an adjunct professor at
North Carolina State University. She was involved in many international events, including ten International Congresses of Entomology, and performed field research in
Puerto Rico,
El Salvador,
India,
Pakistan, and
Colombia. Russell formally retired in 1975 at the federal government's mandatory retirement age of 70 with 48 years of government service, but continued to work over the following 25 years without pay as a collaborator with the USDA
Systematic Entomology Laboratory. She published her last article at the age of 101. She lived to the age of 104, dying on May 15, 2009, at Annapolis, Maryland. ==Honors and awards==