Aqua regia (Latin: ‘royal water’), a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, is able to dissolve gold and platinum.

Apparently, during World War II, George de Hevesy (1885-1966), a Hungarian chemist, dissolved two gold Nobel Prizes (which had been smuggled out of Germany) in aqua regia and stored the solution in his laboratory where they remained undisturbed, even though the Nazis searched diligently for precious metals. After the war, the gold was recovered from the solution, re-cast, and returned to the two Nobel Laureates, James Frick and Max von Laue.

George de Hevesy won his own Nobel Prize in chemistry (1943) for his work with radioactive isotopes.