Her father was the ecologist
Aldo Leopold. 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. She was the senior author of the 1999 article
Phenological changes reflect climate change in Wisconsin, which has over 700 citations. She married the zoologist
William H. Elder in 1941. Working together, they studied wildlife in Illinois and Missouri. They had two daughters and did field work together in Hawaii and Africa. Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1971 she married the geologist
Charles C. Bradley. ==Death and legacy==