Born in Sydney and educated at Girton College, Cambridge, Russell went to the London Hospital Medical College to pursue neuropathology in 1919. She was a member of the Medical Research Council from 1933 to 1946. In that year, Russell became the first woman to hold the chair of Morbid Anatomy at the London Hospital Medical School and head of the Bernard Baron Institute of Pathology, from which she retired in 1960. Her influence in the development of pathology, through teaching and training throughout the world, was considerable.