Nobel Prize

When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, chemist George de Hevesy dissolved two colleagues' Nobel Prize gold medals in aqua regia and left the yellow liquid on a shelf. The Nazis never noticed it. After the war, Hevesy recovered the gold and the Academy recast the medals.

In 2004, physicist Andre Geim discovered graphene by peeling scotch tape off graphite during a casual Friday evening experiment. This "dream nanomaterial"—200 times stronger than steel and 100 times more electrically conductive than copper—earned him the Nobel Prize in 2010.