[2] In 1881, at the age of 22, Truida enrolled at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam to study mathematics and physics.

She and Marie du Saar, who registered as a student in medicine that same autumn, were two of the first women to study there, preceded only by the physician Aletta Jacobs.

After she received an honorable mention (the highest attainable prize)[1] for the fifth time in the annual competition, she was appointed a member of merit of the Royal Dutch Mathematical Society in 1907.

Even after the family moved to Apeldoorn, she won the NAW competition many more times, and in 1923 she received her tenth honorable mention.

On 23 September 1898, she married her cousin Julius Kerkhoven[3] who for 20 years, had worked as a civil engineer for Tjiandjoer and Tjilatjap on West Java in Indonesia, and in Padang and Batu Taba on Sumatra for the Dutch-Indian Railway Company.