Goldhaber became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1953. The Goldhabers moved to Berkeley, California, in 1953 when Gerson was given a job as an assistant professor at the University of California. While Goldhaber had previously worked in physical chemistry, she was able to transition to high energy physics and form a collaboration with her husband working on nuclear emulsion. The Goldhabers hoped to use their nuclear emulsion technique with the newly opened Bevatron — at the time the highest energy accelerator in operation — and it was through their methods that they observed some of the earliest interactions between K mesons and protons. Using the Bevatron and the nuclear emulsion technique Goldhaber was the first to observe mass splitting in charged E hyperons as well as the first nuclear interactions of the antiproton.