She was a professor of science, primarily alpine ecology, and later a professor of information technology.

Komarkova moved back to Europe to join the staff of the American College of Switzerland, a campus of Schiller International University, at Leysin. She stayed with the university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research for several years, climbing the tallest North American mountains and meeting many of the women she would later join on the Himalayan expeditions. It was published as a two-volume book, 'Alpine Vegetation of the Indian Peaks Area' (Cramer, Vaduz 1979), and remains the definitive work on the subject, according to her adviser, Patrick Webber, now of Michigan State University. Komarkova produced a detailed study of the alpine flora of the Niwot Range in the Colorado Rockies. She later became an American citizen.įor her dissertation, Dr. Komarkova studied at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and earned a Ph.D. Throughout her youth, she climbed in Europe, scaling mountains in the Tatras, Carparthians, and the Alps.ĭr. Her father was a scientist at Charles University in Prague, where she would earn a master's degree in biology and chemistry in 1964. Vera Komarkova was born in Pisek, Czechoslovakia, in 1942. She and her partner were the first women to reach that summit, and it was her last major climb. Komarkova led another successful Himalayan expedition, to Cho Oyu in Tibet, the world's sixth highest peak. Most of the roughly $80,000 needed for their trip was raised by a T-shirt campaign with the slogan 'A Woman's Place Is on Top.' It was then generally believed that women were not physically and emotionally strong enough to endure such demanding climbs, and women had problems getting climbing permits or joining men's teams, Ms.

A woman's place is on top annapurna