Max von Laue (October 9, 1879 - April 24, 1960) was a German physicist, who studied under Max Planck. From 1919 he was professor of theoretical physics at the University of Berlin. He worked out a method for measuring X-ray wavelengths, in which a crystal (e.g. rock salt) is used, producing diffraction of the rays. For this work, which also made possible a closer study of crystal structure (a method called X-ray crystallography), he received the 1914 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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 Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.
External links
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue under GFDL
