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WHO MELTED HIS NOBEL PRIZE TOHIDE IT FROM HITLER?
When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914) and James Franck (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925)in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from discovering them. At the time, it was illegal to take gold out of the country, and had it been discovered that Laue had done so, he could have faced prosecution in Germany. Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then re-cast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.


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