Obituary

Prof. Ing. Mirjam Gálová, DrSc. (1935-2017)

On the 31 October of 2017, at the age of 82, Prof. Ing. Miriam Gálová, DrSc. (born Valentová) has passed away. She was born in 1935, on the August 8th in Námestovo. Good time of her childhood ended with a beginning of World War II. Her Jewish family had to hide. They survived thanks to the Protestant Christian family who hid them in a lonely settlement in the mountains.

In 1958, after finishing her university studies at the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology of the Slovak University of Technology (then still called Slovak High School of Technology) in Bratislava, she started working as an assistant at the Department of Chemistry of the Faculty of Metallurgy of the Technical University of Košice. There she mostly taught analytical chemistry but also electrochemistry and physical chemistry. Her career in science began at the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague, where she was an external PhD student from 1962 to 1968. Her supervisor was the director of the institute Prof. Vlček. In 1968, she successfully defended her PhD thesis dealing with the electrochemical properties of coordination compounds of cobalt. In the same year, she enrolled in a single-year postdoctoral course at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, where she studied the electrochemical properties of nonaqueous solutions of electrolytes, mainly aluminium salts in organic solvents.

After returning to her original workplace in Košice, she continued to pursue this subject further as principal investigator in the frame of solving partial tasks of the government program for the advancement of science. Thanks to her organizational skills, she involved other research workers from the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Science of the P. J. Šafárik University in Košice to cooperate in the aforementioned tasks. During that period, she also dedicated her time to solving other, very practical electrochemical and/or physical-chemical problems, while allowing her students a creatively participation. Foreign cooperation of her research group involved the University of Hall and later the University of Greifswald in Germany.

In 1989, she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation thesis (Doctor of Science) in physical chemistry entitled “Electrochemical properties of aluminium compounds in organic electrolytes.” In 1992, she, now as an associate professor, changed her workplace to the Faculty of Science of the P.J. Šafárik University in Košice, after receiving an invitation from the dean. There she began giving lectures on physical chemistry and further expanded her professional career. A notable part of the pedagogic and scientific life of Prof. Gálová was her commitment to public inquiries and her involvement in the internal affairs of the Faculty of Science of the P.J. Šafárik University in Košice. Prof. Gálová was an internationally recognized authority in the field of electrolytic deposition of metallic coatings on the surface of microparticles in fluidised bed cells. She worked on this topic as principal investigator and investigator of grant projects until 2007, when she retired as a professor emeritus. She has authored and co-authored 138 original publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings, chapters in monographs and 3 textbooks for university students, with more than 220 citations. She presented the results of her work at many international congresses. Thanks to her fundamental and extensive knowledge and wisdom, she was a highly esteemed authority for her colleagues and even more so for her students. She was a supervisor of 19 diploma students and 6 PhD students and also took part in the education of many other young research workers as the guarantee of doctoral (PhD.) studies for analytical chemistry.

She was a member of the Slovak Chemical Society since 1970. She was one of the founding members of the Scientific Section for Electrochemistry (later Scientific Section for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry) of the Eastern Slovak branch of the Slovak Chemical Society. From 1975 to 2005, she very dedicatedly worked as the chairperson of Scientific Section for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Košice. She was also a member of the Slovak Association for Surface Treatment and the Society for Science and Arts, Washington-based. She was active in the Jewish community of Kosice and Hidden Child Slovakia (survivors of the holocaust).

She left behind a scientific school, graduates of which some are now professors and associated professors of chemistry, research workers at various universities, institutes of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and private research laboratories. She was a foremost and inspiring scientist, teacher, colleague, friend and a personality, whose responsibility, creativity, tenacity and perseverance in overcoming obstacles serve as an inspiration to all of us, and we will miss her greatly. Only memories remain.

Honour to her memory!