After the death of his father, a physician, the family moved first to Central Europe and in 1928 to Tel-Aviv, Israel, where Gil-Av attended High School.

[1] In his study of oil shale deposits, Gil-Av developed complex-forming stationary phases employing silver(I) ions for selective olefin separations by gas chromatography (GC).

[2] In co-operation with the centre of peptide chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he developed methods of the gas-chromatographic resolution of racemic α-amino acids.

By coating a glass capillary column with the chiral stationary phase (CSP) N-trifluoroacetyl-L-isoleucine lauryl ester, Gil-Av et al. carried out in 1966 the first gas-chromatographic enantioseparation of racemic amino acids as N-trifluoroacetyl-O-alkyl derivatives.

[4] Further contributions of Gil-Av and associates are concerned with the use of chiral mobile phase additives (CMPAs) in liquid chromatography (LC),[5] enantiomeric separation of helicenes by supramolecular LC,[6] the temperature-dependent reversal of enantioselectivity by enthalpy-entropy compensation[7] and non-linear effects leading to enantiomeric enrichment during chromatography on achiral stationary phases.