Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers

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Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers
Van Cittert-Eymers in 1963
Born
Johanna Geertruida Eymers

(1903-06-19)19 June 1903
Velp, Netherlands
Died22 October 1988(1988-10-22) (aged 85)
Utrecht, Netherlands
Other namesTruus van Cittert-Eymers
Alma materUtrecht University
SpousePieter Hendrik van Cittert
ChildrenHan van Konijnenburg-van Cittert
Scientific career
Fields
ThesisFundamental principles for the illumination of a picture gallery (1935)
Doctoral advisorLeonard Ornstein

Johanna Geertruida (Truus) van Cittert-Eymers was a Dutch physicist, historian of science, museum director and author.[1] [2]

Early years[edit]

Johanna Geertruida Eymers was born in Velp, in the Netherlands on 19 June 1903, the only child of teacher Johan Anton Eymers and Johanna Hermina Aleida Huetinck. She graduated from secondary school with a HBS-b diploma in Arnhem in 1921 and moved to Utrecht to begin studying physics at the university there in 1923.[1]

Career[edit]

Eymers began work as a researcher in the experimental physics group of Leonard Ornstein at Utrecht University in 1929 and in 1932 became the head of the teaching laboratory.[1] Ornstein's group did both pure and applied research, with the latter often at the request of businesses or government institutions. Thus it came to be that Eymers published research about atomic emission spectra but her doctoral research concerned the illumination of an art gallery in The Hague. [3][4] Eymers graduated cum laude with a PhD in 1935 and did postdoctoral research in biophysics, specifically on luminescent bacteria.[1][5]

After her marriage to van Cittert in 1938, van Cittert-Eymers's employment was terminated because of the marriage bar which was effective in the Netherlands until 1957. She resented her loss of employment and worked unpaid to assist her husband in his work as curator of the University Museum.[1]

Personal life[edit]

Eymers married her colleague, the physicist Pieter Hendrik van Cittert in 1938.[2] The couple had a son, Benjamin, in 1939 who died in infancy and a daughter, Han [ nl ], in 1943 who became a biologist.[1][6]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f Hagers, Steven (28 May 2017). "Eymers, Johanna Geertruida (1903-1988)". Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (in Dutch). Retrieved 12 February 2022.
  2. ^ a b Deiman, Jan C. (2013). "Pieter H. van Cittert (1889–1959) en Johanna G. van Cittert-Eymers (1903–1988): natuurkundigen, museologen en wetenschapshistorici avant la lettre". Studium (in Dutch). 6 (3/4): 263–266. doi:10.18352/studium.9287.
  3. ^ van der Heijden, Margriet (11 January 2020). "Ze bracht het universiteitsmuseum tot bloei". NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  4. ^ Ornstein, L. S.; Kapuscinski, W.; Eymers, J. G. (1928). "Intensity measurements in the secondary spectrum of hydrogen". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. 119 (781): 83–91. doi:10.1098/rspa.1928.0085. S2CID 231170282.}
  5. ^ van Schouwenburg, K. L.; Eymers, Johanna G. (1936). "Quantum Relationship of the Light-emitting Process of Luminous Bacteria". Nature. 138 (3484): 245. doi:10.1038/138245a0. S2CID 4113730.
  6. ^ "Announcements". Utrechtsch Nieuwsblad (in Dutch). 6 February 1939. p. 4. Retrieved 13 February 2022.