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Wilhelm Röntgen

Original nameWilhelm Röntgen

German Physicist, Discoverer of X-Rays, First Nobel Laureate in Physics

The Names Remembered · Small Roles, Famous Names

The Discovery of X-RaysEarly Medical Imaging TechnologyThe Nobel Prize in Physics (1901, the first)

Who they are

Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) was a German physicist who in 1895, in an experiment studying the discharge of cathode-ray tubes, accidentally discovered a previously wholly unknown mysterious ray that could penetrate most opaque substances yet made a nearby fluorescent screen glow faintly, and, unable to determine its specific physical nature, named it "X-rays" (X often standing for an unknown in mathematics). Röntgen soon realized this ray could penetrate the soft tissue of the body yet was markedly blocked by denser tissue such as bone, and thereby took the first X-ray image in human history — an X-ray of his wife Anna Röntgen’s hand, in which the stark bone outline and the ring she wore are clearly visible, and by tradition Anna, seeing it, exclaimed "I have seen my own death." Within a very short time after X-ray technology appeared it was introduced into clinical medicine, used for rapid, noninvasive diagnosis of fractures and location of foreign bodies within the body, and this discovery thereafter continued to drive the development of more precise and complex modern medical imaging including CT scanning, profoundly changing the whole diagnostic and treatment method of modern medicine. Röntgen actively gave up the chance to patent this epoch-making discovery and profit from it, insisting on releasing the discovery of X-rays and the related technical principle wholly free to the doctors and scientists of the world, and for it won the first Nobel Prize in Physics in history in 1901.

Primary sourcesWilhelm Röntgen, "On a New Kind of Rays" (1895 paper)The 1901 Nobel Prize in Physics citation (the first Nobel Prize in Physics in history)

Key stories

"I Have Seen My Own Death"

After Röntgen accidentally discovered the penetrating property of X-rays, he could not wait to take an image of his wife Anna’s hand with the new ray, the film clearly showing the stark bone outline of her hand and the ring worn around it, and Anna, seeing this never-before-seen "see-through" image of herself, was greatly shocked, by tradition exclaiming "I have seen my own death" — this photograph thereafter became the first, and most famous, X-ray medical image in human history.

A Scientist Who Actively Gave Up the Patent

Röntgen could have patented the epoch-making discovery of X-rays and gained huge commercial returns, but he firmly held that such a scientific discovery of great public-health value should be released wholly free to the whole world for doctors and scientists to study and apply without patent restriction, and this generous, selfless choice let X-ray technology spread swiftly to the global medical world in a very short time, profoundly changing the clinical diagnosis and treatment of fractures, foreign-body location, and more thereafter.

Relationships

Disciple

☢️Marie Curie　Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays directly inspired Marie Curie to take up the systematic study of radioactivity thereafter

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"roentgen" as an early radiation-dose unitThe "roentgen" was long used as a unit of ionizing-radiation dose, and though the SI has since changed to new units such as the "gray," the word "roentgen" is still occasionally mentioned in some medical and historical contexts.

Appears in

The World Lit by Electric CurrentSeeing the Unseen: X-Rays and Photography Microbes, Genes, and Invisible LifeCurie’s Radium and Einstein’s Equation

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