Lydia Rapoport was born in 1923 in Vienna, Austria, to an intellectual Jewish family. Her family emigrated to New York City when she was a child. She graduated from Hunter College in 1942 and went on to the Smith College School for Social Work. She received her Master's in Social Work in 1944 at the age of twenty-one, making her the youngest degree recipient in the School's history.

In the course of her career, Rapoport conducted consultations, workshops, and seminars at various institutions, among them Hebrew University in Israel from 1963 to 1964, the Smith College School for Social Work in 1965, 1966 and 1967, and the University of Chicago in 1968. She served on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley from 1956 until her death on September 6, 1971. In 1974, the Lydia Rapoport Distinguished Visiting Professorship and Lecture Series was established in her memory at the Smith College School for Social Work.

The Lydia Rapoport Papers date from 1960 to 1968. Series I. Professional Activities consists of a letter to the Curator of the Sophia Smith Collection from Robert T. Apte, Rapoport's colleague at Berkeley and donor of her papers. It details certain aspects of the time Rapoport served at that university, as well as the circumstances surrounding her death. The series also includes professional correspondence, syllabi and course outlines, course evaluations, bibliographies, and transcripts of lectures. Series II. Writings features both published and unpublished articles written at the height of her career. Published journal articles highlight the extensive research Rapoport conducted on the topics of family intervention, mental health consultation, and short-term casework. Most of the unpublished articles were written in 1963 and 1964 while Rapoport taught at the Hebrew University.

This collection is organized into two series:

• I. Professional Activities
• II. Writings