Eva Smolková-Keulemansová

Eva Smolková-Keulemansová ( Weilová; 27 April 1927 – 27 February 2024) was a Czech scientist and Holocaust survivor. After she survived the Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, she became a renowned scientist and professor of analytical science at Charles University in Prague.

Early life Smolková-Keulemansová was born on 27 April 1927 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to a Jewish family. She had a normal childhood in Czechoslovakia as an only child to her parents Alice and Oskar. She finished primary school and had started grammar school but was taken out of school by her father after anti-Jewish laws started applying to grammar schools. She was employed at various Jewish workshops after leaving school. In Terezín, she worked in agriculture, so she was able to go into the ghetto and managed to make contact with her father. In December 1943, she and her mother were transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she stayed until June 1944. After six months of horrible conditions at Auschwitz, Eva and her mother were unexpectedly recognized as able to work and were relocated to the Dessauer Ufer camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg, where she experienced better conditions. Her final transport was without her mother to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, which was liberated the same month.

Return to Prague In November 1945, Smolková-Keulemansová returned to Prague to continue her studies. She completed grammar school and realized that the biggest struggle in her supplementary exams was chemistry, so she began to study chemistry at Charles University in Prague, leading to her lifelong devotion and love for the subject. She graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Charles University in 1952.

"The First Lady of Chromatography" After graduating, Smolková-Keulemansová joined the Faculty of Sciences at Charles University and focused on analytical chemistry. In the early 1950s, she built a team focused on modern analytical separation methods such as gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography and electromigration. At the same time, she attended an analytical conference in Prague, leading to her finding a volumetric chromatographic device. Her team began to prepare its own device with volumetric detection and constructed a more universal glass thermal conductivity detector, allowing them to analyze a larger variety of gases. Later, this novel detector became part of a commercially available instrument.

Smolková-Keulemansová died on 27 February 2024, at the age of 96.