And this is how incredibly smart people can over-engineer a solution to a simple problem...
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I'm going to guess that it looks over-engineered to you because you haven't been a chemist. This is the chemist equivalent of solving a problem with a 10 line Ruby script: perhaps more complicated than the very simplest conceivable solution, definitely a terrible path to solution if you were suggesting it to a lay third party, but not very complicated at all for someone who has spent a lot of time in the lab. It looks a lot more complicated to someone working outside the domain than someone working inside of it.
What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?
Take a boat out and toss the medals into the sea?
Wouldn't have been able to get the gold back that way.
I'm going to have to push back on this clear scope creep.
"What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?"
To hide them.
The Germans are not going to spend a division of soldiers 4 years to dig up all of Copenhagen.
There are innumerable places to hide them.
They also could have simply been deformed i.e. markings removed, then they're just clumps of gold and evidence of nothing.
This takes the tech community's propensity for Monday-morning quarterbacking to a breathtaking new level. Yes, I'm sure you came up with a much better solution in your sixty seconds of thinking in your comfortable chair than the people on the spot, faced with literal Nazis, did at the time.
Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that.
"Just hide them! I wonder why Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and future Nobel laureate George de Hevesy didn't think of that."
Because they are geniuses and probably over-think everything.
It would take 20 minutes to find a spot to hide them, and they wouldn't be recovered for 1000 years if people weren't the wiser. But it would be pointless because you can remove the markings with any hard objects, basically instantly.
The Nazis were not 'hunting' for this stuff, even if they were, it wouldn't be worth any effort.
Step 1) take a hammer to them and remove the markings. Gold is soft and malleable. Evidence = gone. 5 minutes.
If you're worried about having arbitrary bits of unmarked gold:
+ Throw it in the garbage next door + Throw it in a bag in the harbour + Bury them in the lane or garden around the corner + Throw it in the sewer
It's just a couple of small bits of unmarked gold at that point. Wherever it's found - or not - it's meaningless.
"Because they are geniuses and probably over-think everything."
There are some anecdotes to the contrary.
Enrico Fermi famously estimated the strength of the first atomic bomb by "dropping from about six feet small pieces of paper before, during and after the passage of the blast wave."
Richard Feynman tested the integrity of an o-ring which he concluded must have caused the Challenger disaster by dropping the o-ring in to a glass of cold water and noticing its deformation.
These are but the first two examples that spring to mind of simple solutions found by "geniuses". I'd also categorize the way the gold medals were hidden as another simple (and brilliant) solution. It would be interesting to read a compilation of such anecdotes, if one exists.
Um, they were stealing everything not nailed down.
Your response reads like "now it's just worthless gold!"
Yes, they probably could have buried it in the woods somewhere, but that wouldn't have made for the cool story to tell the grandkids.
>"I suggested that we should bury the medal(s)," but Bohr thought no, the Germans would dig up the grounds, the garden, search everywhere in the building. Too dangerous.
Though I guess they could have found somewhere else...
I took that to mean that there was not much time as Nazis were patrolling the streets, going out with two large gold medals would be extremely dangerous as they might have been stopped and searched.
> To hide them.
That's kind of what was done. It was a clever simple hack. I'm not sure how hard it is to prepare aqua regia (maybe they had a sufficient quantity already), but all they had to do was drop the metals in, wait, and place on a shelf with other innocuous flasks and solutions.
The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place. Also consider that there might be others interested in a large gold disk
"The article so specifically stated that he was concerned the Germans would dig up the place"
The Nazis would surely dig up his offices, but not Copenhagen.
Moreover, the Nazis didn't even know that those things were there - and they don't really have much value at all to the Nazis. They're a couple of pieces of gold.
The Nazis could do whatever they pleased with whomever they wanted - it's ridiculous to think that a couple of tiny pieces of gold would have changed their view on what to do with an acclaimed scientist. It's laughable.
They'll capture a Scientist and put him to work on whatever they want, or not.
A couple of pieces of gold are totally irrelevant.
If this were a bottle of 'heavy water' or some nuclear material, or piece of gear that they knew existed, knew was in his possession and had some strategic value, then they might spend some time looking for it. Otherwise this is not a story.
"it's ridiculous to think that a couple of tiny pieces of gold would have changed their view on what to do with an acclaimed scientist. It's laughable."
Many people were killed on a whim by the Nazis, without much if any reason at all. Being a famous scientist wouldn't necessarily save you (and especially not your valuables, which were frequently confiscated).
Then there's a good chance that the grunts who searched these people wouldn't know who they were, wouldn't care, or even feel contempt or hatred for them because of who they were or what they said or did, and would in fact value gold far more than their lives.
That's why hammering out the Nobel details and throwing them in the garbage, harbour, garden would have saved them entirely.
Random gold found in the harbour does not implicate Bohr.
If you're Bohr, you have to assume that the Nazi army will impose a shoot-on-sight curfew when they reach your part of Copenhagen in a few hours or less.
Turing did that with his silver, look how that worked for him. And there weren't even Nazis around!
The nice thing about this hidden in plain sight solution is that the location of the medals could be communicated among a small community of colleagues if necessary without the need for a messy paper trail. A set of coordinates or a treasure map is a lot less reliable in that it can be lost or intercepted.
The solution only has three ingredients - it's quite an elegant solution really