[7] She refused and remained in Germany to work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry with Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer on the quantum theoretical problems of photochemistry.
[6][7] Cremer studied the breakdown of alcohols using oxide catalysts on scholarship at the University of Freiburg with George de Hevesy for a brief time.
[6][7] Cremer returned to Berlin to work with Michael Polanyi at Haber's Institut, where they investigated the conversion of hydrogen and ortho-hydrogen in one spin state to para-hydrogen.
[6] Cremer joined Otto Hahn at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry to study radioactive trace compounds in 1937.
[6] After World War II began and male scientists and professors were drafted, Cremer was able to obtain a position as a docent in 1940 at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
[7] At Innsbruck, Cremer researched the hydrogenation of acetylene and found difficulty separating two gases with similar adsorption heats using the common methods of the day.
[9] She was aware of the liquid absorption chromatography research going on at Innsbruck,[1] so she thought of a parallel method to separate gases which used an inert carrier gas as the mobile phase.
[6] She initially submitted a short academic paper in 1944 to Naturwissenschaften, which was accepted and she informed them that future experimental work would follow.
In 1952, the British Anthony Trafford James and Archer Porter Martin and in 1953, the Czech J. Janak published reports claiming the invention of gas chromatography.
[7] Martin and his partner Richard Laurence Millington Synge won the Nobel Prize for partition chromatography, which is often credited for introducing the use of gas as a mobile phase, in 1952.
Following the new reports, the method of gas chromatography spread widely and Cremer's work slowly gained more recognition.
[10] Deutsches Museum opened an exhibition on 3 November 1995 which featured Cremer's work in its branch in Bonn, explaining to the public how she built the first gas chromatograph with Fritz Prior in the 1940s.