Vera Stepen was born on Chicago's west side to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. As a teenager, she was more interested in playing the
cello than in mathematics, but she left high school two years early to go to the
University of Chicago, and finished her studies there in three years. she stayed at the university for a master's degree, which she earned in 1952 not long after marrying her husband, a high-energy experimental physicist. She began working in physics at the University of Chicago, but soon won a fellowship to study at
Northwestern University. Her husband became a professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Pless moved with him to Massachusetts, where she completed her doctorate from Northwestern in 1957 under the supervision of Kaplansky's student
Alex F. T. W. Rosenberg, soon before the birth of her first child. When the
Mansfield amendment banned the military from performing basic research, and died at her home in
Oak Park, Illinois on March 2, 2020 at the age of 88. ==Awards and honors==