Eve Konrad Hawkins passed away on April 18, as a result of complications due to COVID-19, at a nursing home in the Bronx, N.Y.

Born on March 12, 1930 in eastern Hungary near Debrecen, Eve Konrad was just a young girl when she saw the worst humanity had to offer, witnessing the destruction of her home and synagogue. She miraculously survived World War II and he Holocaust with her parents and brother, and returned to rebuild and study in her native city.

Nevertheless, she wound up fleeing after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Soviet Union’s brutal quashing of its dissidents.

Armed with only a backpack, she took a circuitous route, walking to Hungary’s northern border and crossing into Austria, eventually reaching the United States in 1957.

Konrad studied meticulously, earning her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. She married Charles Hawkins, though it ended in divorce without children.

She spent her life compiling research with a particular interest in algae. From her home base in New York City, Konrad Hawkins taught biology at the University of Pennsylvania, Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and City College in Harlem.

She was predeceased by her brother, Gyorgy Konrad, a writer, sociologist and Hungarian dissident during the Communist era in Hungary.

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