08 Nov 1895: Roentgen discovers X-rays

On this day in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen (Röntgen) discovered X-rays while doing experiments on fluorescence. Two weeks later he took his first image, of his wife’s hand – which mortified her so much she exclaimed, “I have seen my death!”

1896 photo of an early X-ray machine. (Wikimedia Commons)

Some more details on Roentgen and his discovery:

• a native German, he studied at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
• he won the first Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1901
• he later created a device to count alpha particles in radium
• in 1914, he purchased a ticket to take up residency at Columbia University – but World War I broke out and he stayed in Germany
• roentgens (R) are units of radiation
• atomic element 111 was named Roentgenium in 2004