George de Hevesy - Definition and Overview

George de Hevesy (August 1, 1885 - July 5, 1966) was a 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.