Carol Jane Anger was elected to membership in the American Astronomical Society at its meeting in Chicago in 1930.[7] After her marriage, the course of Rieke's scientific career depended significantly on her husband's career locations. She continued making spectroscopic measurements at the Harvard Observatory after completing her doctoral work.[8] In 1938 she attended the 4th Annual Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics at George Washington University; she was the lone woman scientist in attendance and in the group photographs,[9][10] standing with John von Neumann, Edward Teller, George Gamow, Hans Bethe, and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.[11]
She co-authored papers with Mulliken while she lived in Chicago.[12][13] When the Riekes moved to Massachusetts during World War II, she worked on radar countermeasures. After the war, her husband joined the physics faculty at Purdue University, but nepotism rules meant she could not also become a faculty member; she was, instead, a lecturer in mathematics. When the couple moved back to Chicago, she taught mathematics at South Suburban College while resuming her chemistry research with Mulliken.[4][13]
Scientific publications by Rieke included "A study of the spectrum of alpha2 Canum Venaticorum" (Astrophysical Journal 1929),[14] "Wave-Length Standards in the Extreme Ultraviolet" (Phys. Rev. 1936, with Kenneth R. More),[15] "Molecular electronic spectra, dispersion and polarization: The theoretical interpretation and computation of oscillator strengths and intensities" (Reports on Progress in Physics 1940, with Mulliken),[16] "Hyperconjugation" (Journal of the American Chemical Society 1941, with Mulliken and Weldon G. Brown),[17] "Bond Integrals and Spectra With an Analysis of Kynch and Penney's Paper on the Heat of Sublimation of Carbon" (Rev. Mod. Phys. 1942, with Mulliken).[18]
Carol Jane Anger married physicist Foster Frederick Rieke in 1932. They had two children, George and Katharine.[25] Their son George H. Rieke became an astronomer, and married another astronomer, Marcia J. Rieke.[26] Their daughter Katharine Rieke Lawson is on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.[27][28] Carol A. Rieke was widowed when Foster Rieke died in 1970.[29] She died at the end of 1999, aged 91 years, in Tucson, Arizona.[4]
^Mulliken, Robert S; Rieke, Carol A (January 1, 1941). "Molecular electronic spectra, dispersion and polarization: The theoretical interpretation and computation of oscillator strengths and intensities". Reports on Progress in Physics. 8 (1): 231–273. Bibcode:1941RPPh....8..231M. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/8/1/312. ISSN0034-4885. S2CID250817790.
^Mulliken, Robert S.; Rieke, Carol A.; Brown, Weldon G. (January 1941). "Hyperconjugation *". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 63 (1): 41–56. doi:10.1021/ja01846a008. ISSN0002-7863.
^Mulliken, Robert S.; Rieke, Carol A. (April 1, 1942). "Bond Integrals and Spectra With an Analysis of Kynch and Penney's Paper on the Heat of Sublimation of Carbon". Reviews of Modern Physics. 14 (2–3): 259. Bibcode:1942RvMP...14..259M. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.14.259. ISSN0034-6861.