Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
1845–1923, Lennep, Prussia, Munich, Germany
German physicist who discovered X-rays and became the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
Born in Lennep (Prussia), Röntgen trained as an engineer at Zürich before turning to physics. He held professorships at Strasbourg, Hohenheim, Giessen, and Würzburg — where, on the evening of 8 November 1895, he discovered X-rays. He refused to patent the discovery, saying inventions and discoveries belong to humanity at large; in 1900 he moved to the University of Munich, teaching there until 1920.
Nobel-winning work
On the evening of 8 November 1895, while studying cathode rays in a Crookes tube wrapped in black cardboard, Röntgen noticed a nearby screen coated with barium platinocyanide glowing although nothing from the tube could reach it — a new, penetrating radiation. Over the next seven weeks he systematically investigated the properties of these 'X-rays': they passed through paper, wood, and soft tissue but were stopped by bone and metal, producing the first radiograph — of his wife's hand — on 22 December 1895. His paper Über eine neue Art von Strahlen (On a New Kind of Rays), published 28 December 1895, caused immediate worldwide sensation; within a year X-rays were used for diagnosis in hospitals across the world, and the discovery opened the road to research on radioactivity and atomic structure, contributing to the discovery of the electron.
Workplaces: University of Würzburg
Germany