FILČÁKOVÁ, Elena
* 30. 3. 1905, Košice, Slovakia
† 4. 7. 1983, Prague, Czech Republic
Physicist
After finishing the Košice grammar school, F. studied mathematics and physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Charles University in Prague. Between 1929 and 1946 she taught at various secondary schools in Košice and Prague. She also taught in the Department of Technical Physics at the newly established Technical University in Košice from 1937. In 1946 she began teaching at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, which was part of the Czech University of Technology in Prague. While teaching there, the Ministry of Education sent her to examine how the laboratories are equipped at universities in England. On the way home she visited the Radium Institute in Paris, where Irène Joliot-Curie offered her a job. In 1947/48 she achieved a studentship UNESCO and at the same time studied at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Paris. She participated in the drive of the first French nuclear reactor, issued contributions and also read them on the French radio. She rejected an invitation to Los Alamos in the USA.
After returning to Prague she again worked at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech University of Technology. She invested her rich knowledge in radioisotopes and radiation in medicine, while her knowledge of nuclear physics remained unused. In later years, she and her husband J. Patzl focused on the development of new construction materials (mass D., shortening the time of cement hardening), which were also patented.
