Tettje Clay-Jolles

Tettje Clay-Jolles (1881–1972) was one of the first female Dutch physicists. She studied the variation of atmospheric radiation with geographic latitude.

Early life Clay-Jolles was born in 1881 in Assen, Netherlands to Eva Dina Halbertsma and Maurits Aernout Diedrick Jolles. She was the first and only girl to attend the local secondary school, passing both the alpha and beta series exams at the end of her studies there. These exams tested her knowledge of the humanities and science and she passed both, which was reportedly an unusual occurrence. under Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. Clay-Jones and her husband published an article on these findings in the Proceedings of the Amsterdam Academy of Sciences entitled "Measurements of Ultraviolet Sunlight in the Tropics."

After some dispute over the veracity of these findings, Clay-Jolles defended their work in a discussion published in the East Indian scientific journal, Natuurkundig Tijdshrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië.

Personal life Clay-Jolles met and fell in love with Jacob Clay, another of Kamerlingh Onnes's students, and in 1908 the two were married. Later that year she left school to focus on her family. She spent the next twelve years raising the couple's three children. In 1920, the family moved to Bandung, Java when Jacob Clay was hired as a professor of physics at the Institute of Technology.

In 1929, the family moved to Amsterdam where Clay-Jones died in 1972.