The Next Rotation - The Universe of Fenris Fox
24 January 2007
 
World War II: The chemist who hid (Nobel Prize) gold from the Nazis.

I happened to do a bit of extra reading related to nitric acid - mainly because of the looney quote I mentioned earlier - and looked up aqua regia, which is made partly from nitric acid.

I then found this little bit of history, mixed into the otherwise mainly technical article on aqua regia on Wikipedia:
"When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He 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 gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation presented new medals to Laue and Franck. This is currently on display in the London museum."
I've heard of eccentric, ingenius plans.. but this one's off the Richter scale!

I think he (the chemist who saved the gold) should've gotten a medal, too.
 
Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home
Assorted writings & artwork of a furry. Sometimes presented from the point-of-view of the author's "fursona" (personal furry): Fenris "Fenny" Fox, the futuristic kitsune.

+~~~LIVE FREE or DIE!~~~+

Schneier's Three Natural Laws of the Digital World

Name:
Location: Nevada, United States
ARCHIVES
July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 /


Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Syndicate me! +~~=:o)

Email the Blogmaster:
fenrisblog *removeme*@*removeme* gmail.com

(Munged to fool email address harvesting spam robot programs.)


Powered by Blogger

Creative Commons License
All works on this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License, unless otherwise noted (i.e., on a per-work or per-post basis).

NOTE: All works that were specifically noted as using the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License, created prior to March 9, 2007, are hereby placed under this site's general license - an even less restrictive one.