Elisabeth Zernike (1891–1982)

Elisabeth Zernike was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to an intellectual family. Her father Carl Friedrich August Zernike was a school principal and mathematics teacher, and her mother Antje Dieperink also taught mathematics.

Among her siblings, her older sister Anne Zernike became the first female pastor in Holland, and her brother Frederik "Frits" Zernike won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1953. Elisabeth attended the girls' high school in Amsterdam and later the Toonkunst Music School, after which she started writing. Eventually, she published dozens of books. From 1915 to 1917, she was editor of the Amsterdam student weekly Propria Cures. Elisabeth became the first woman in the Netherlands to be awarded a literary prize: in 1921 she won the Haagsche Postprijs for her novel Een Vrouw als niet (If Not a Woman).