Gay van der Meer

Gatske van der Meer (5 June 1924 – 9 August 2014) was a Dutch numismatist, who specialised in early medieval coinage of Britain, as well as historic and contemporary medallic art. Van der Meer was awarded the Brenner Medal, and was an honorary member of the British Numismatic Society and the Svenska Numismatiska Föreningen. She was also appointed Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau and was a member of Teylers Tweede Genootschap.

Early life and education Van der Meer was born on 5 June 1924. Her brother, Simon van der Meer, became a physicist and was awarded the Nobel Prize. In 1943 she graduated from school and went to work in an import and export business. During the Dutch famine of 1944–1945 she remained in Friesland, and in 1946 was working for the same business as previously. In the 1960s she worked on the coins in the collection of Robert Bruce Cotton, in collaboration with Michael Dolley and Christopher Blunt. It was her discovery of a manuscript that enabled scholarship to understand what was missing from the Cotton collection. She also had a long-standing research interest into the tokens of the Holtzhey family. She also studied Gillis Anselmo's album amicorum. In 1963 she was appointed Acting Director of the Het Koninklijk Penningkabinet, a role she held until 1984.

Van der Meer died on 9 August 2014.

Awards and honours

1968, appointed an honorary member of Svenska Numismatiska Föreningen.

Selected works

Van der meer, G. (1962). A Second Anglo-Saxon Coin of Reading. British Numismatic Journal 31. Vol 31, pp. 161-162. Van Der Meer, Gay. "Sir Robert Bruce Cotton and His Illuminated Genesis Manuscript." Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art/Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek Online 16.1 (1965): 3-15.