There are many places they could have been hidden and never found.
Agree. While it's a cool story to tell your grandchildren, burying medals (of course, not on your own property) would be much faster solution.
Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?
"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.
Turing did that with his silver, look how that worked for him. And there weren't even Nazis around!
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the thing to do then is to track down the source quoted in the article When the Nazis ransacked Bohr's institute and figure out if it is exaggerated. Your mere disbelief is rather weak in the face of statements like that one.
Flipping through the book, it doesn't give much detail as to when exactly the German stormtroopers came knocking. The notes and errata at the end of the book don't seem to specify it either. The point is the article makes it look like "oh crap the nazis have invaded, let's dissolve these medals" rather than "they been here for a few weeks and look like they're about to settle some bits of nazi business".
His autobiography is not detailed:
https://archive.org/stream/adventuresinradi01heve#page/27/mo...
I imagine they were thinking about hiding them pretty soon after the city fell though. I agree that overdramatizing the timing is unfortunate.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#24Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the simple, appropriately engineered solution?
"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.
>"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...
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#26There are many places they could have been hidden and never found.
Agree. While it's a cool story to tell your grandchildren, burying medals (of course, not on your own property) would be much faster solution.
I believe a there is a plot line in Pulp Fiction that touches on a solution satisfying both constraints.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#27this article is 5 years old! hackernews is for news, it is not a library.
We've banned this account for trolling.
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. While it's a cool story to tell your grandchildren, burying medals (of course, not on your own property) would be much faster solution.
I believe a there is a plot line in Pulp Fiction that touches on a solution satisfying both constraints.
If he had hidden it, and it was never recovered, then it would be like a really cool 'Copenhagen mystery' - the 'lost Nobel Prize'.
They could have a little festival every year to look for it ...
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#29I find it a little bit hard to believe that finding a couple of medals would be a priority as you're invading Denmark and Norway. Sure, the Danes basically lay down and let the Germans march in, but really? The Germans needed to get to Norway asap, and were probably more concerned about that. Secure airfields, harbors, that kind of thing. More likely the Danish cooperation policy helped later on, after the Germans ha…
They weren't looking for the medals specifically, they were looking for evidence of wrongdoing. If you're going to search for evidence, you're going to do it at least semi-thoroughly , cause you don't expect that sort of thing to just be sitting on a workbench (though you probably wouldn't go as far as digging holes in the backyard, unless you have specific reasons to think evidence was literally buried).
Re: Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011)
#30[deleted]