Eleanor Lavater was a niece of Louis Lavater. She was educated at Eastern Goldfields High School and then the University of Western Australia, where she gained a B.Sc. She then attended Newnham College at Cambridge University, gaining a B.A. in 1928. On returning to Australia she took up a position as lecturer in mathematics at the University of Melbourne, where she remained until the early 1960s. Her husband, Clarence Hutton, died of illness whilst on active service in Palestine in 1941.
