Kathleen Gough was born on 16 August 1925 in Hunsingore, a village near Wetherby in Yorkshire, England, that then had a population of 100, no electricity and no piped water.
She was educated at the church school in Hunsingore, from where she obtained a scholarship to King James's Grammar School, Knaresborough and then, in 1943, to Girton College, Cambridge.