Education
Born on 11 September 1897 in Pretoria, South Africa, Theiler graduated from Pretoria Girls’ High School and spent a year at Rhodes University College in Grahamstown, South Africa, before transferring to South African College in Cape Town, where she graduated in 1918 with a Bachelor of Science degree. She went to Europe to undertake postgraduate work in helminthology at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where she took her Doctor of Science degree in 1922. She then studied at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the London School of Tropical Medicine, authoring four important scientific papers on research concerning the nematode parasites of South African equines.