George Charles de Hevesy

August 1st 1885 - July 5th 1966

An Hungarian chemist who was important in the development of the tracer method where radioactive tracers are used to study chemical processes, e.g., the metabolism of animals. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1943.

When the Nazis invaded Denmark he dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia and placed this reagent 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 recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.

in 1923 he was a co-discoverer of Hafnium, with Dirk Coster.