In 1940, inside the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Hungarian chemist György Hevesy dissolved two gold Nobel prizes in aqua regia to hide them from advancing Nazi troops, according to historical accounts. The medals belonged to German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck, who opposed the Nazi regime and had secretly smuggled their 23-carat gold awards to Denmark after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, as detailed in historical records.
Dissolving Nobel Gold in Copenhagen
Hitler’s legislation strictly prohibited taking gold out of Germany, making the export of the medals an act of high treason. According to biographical records, Max von Laue remained in Germany as a vocal opponent of the regime, meaning the discovery of his medal in Copenhagen would have sent him directly to a concentration camp or execution squad. James Franck, who was of Jewish descent, had already fled to America, but leaving the medals behind exposed his remaining German family members to severe retaliation.
When Gestapo officers searched the Niels Bohr Institute, the dissolved gold of both Nobel prizes sat completely hidden in plain sight on a shelf among ordinary chemical bottles as a yellowish-brown liquid, according to Hevesy’s memoirs. Niels Bohr’s own 1922 physics Nobel medal had already been spared after he auctioned it off months prior to support Finnish civilian relief funds, with the anonymous buyer immediately donating it to the Danish Museum of History.
Following the conclusion of the war, Hevesy recovered the gold from the acid solution and sent the gold powder back to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm in 1950. The medals were re-poured and formally re-presented to Max von Laue and James Franck in 1952.
Did you know? György Hevesy’s own Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1944 for his pioneering work using radioactive isotopes as tracers—a technique he first tested in his Manchester boarding house to catch a landlady serving leftovers.
Scientific Breakthroughs and Manchester Roots
Born in Budapest into a noble-ranked Hungarian-Jewish family with ties to industrialist ancestry, Hevesy pursued education across Hungary and Germany before arriving in 1911 at the laboratory of Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford, the discoverer of the atomic nucleus. According to biographical documentation, Rutherford assigned the young researcher the task of separating radium-D from lead.
After more than a year of failed attempts, Hevesy realized that radium-D was chemically identical to lead as an isotope, making physical separation impossible. That realization sparked a methodological pivot: rather than separating them, he used radioactive radium-D to trace the pathway of ordinary lead through chemical processes. This radioactive tracer technique eventually laid the groundwork for modern medical diagnostics, including positron emission tomography (PET-CT) scans used in oncology.
In 1923, working alongside Dirk Costernel in Copenhagen, Hevesy used atomic theory and X-ray spectroscopy to discover hafnium, the 72nd element of the periodic table, named after the Latin name for Copenhagen. According to industry data, hafnium’s neutron-absorbing and electrical insulating properties have made it a vital strategic material in modern microprocessors and nuclear reactor control rods, with Intel utilizing hafnium-based insulation since 2007 to prevent current leakage and drive chip miniaturization.
Political Turmoil and Emigration to Sweden
Returning to Austria-Hungary, Hevesy served as a technical officer managing military X-ray laboratories near the front lines during the First World War. However, after the fall of the subsequent Hungarian Soviet Republic, the Horthy regime's purge of intellectuals targeted academics who had held positions under the prior administration, compounded by rising antisemitism and the implementation of numerus clausus university quota law in 1920, according to historical accounts.
Responding to an invitation from Niels Bohr, Hevesy left Hungary in 1920 and never returned to work in the country. Decades later, following the 1943 Nazi crackdown on Jews in Denmark, Hevesy escaped to Stockholm by train using a Hungarian passport and joined the Institute for Organic Chemistry. He passed away in Freiburg, Germany, in 1966 at the age of 80, having cemented his legacy alongside fellow Hungarian-born scientific pioneers of the 20th century.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did György Hevesy hide the Nobel medals?
Hevesy dissolved the gold medals of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia—a potent mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids—inside the Niels Bohr Institute in 1940. The resulting solution remained stored on a laboratory shelf unnoticed by Gestapo inspectors throughout the occupation.
What happened to the gold after World War II?
In 1950, Hevesy extracted the gold from the chemical solution and sent it to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, where the medals were re-minted and returned to their original owners in 1952.
What was György Hevesy’s primary scientific contribution?
Hevesy pioneered the use of radioactive tracers in chemistry and biology, discovered the chemical element hafnium in 1923, and received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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