Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, was born on March 27, 1845 at Lennep in the Lower Rhine Province of Germany.

Röntgen’s first work was published in 1870, dealing with the specific heats of gases, followed a few years later by a paper on the thermal conductivity of crystals. Among other problems he studied were the electrical and other characteristics of quartz; the influence of pressure on the refractive indices of various fluids; the modification of the planes of polarised light by electromagnetic influences; the variations in the functions of the temperature and the compressibility of water and other fluids; the phenomena accompanying the spreading of oil drops on water.

Röntgen’s name, however, is chiefly associated with his discovery of the rays that he called X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

In honour of Röntgen's accomplishments, in 2004, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) named element 111, roentgenium, a radioactive element with multiple unstable isotopes, after him. The non-SI unit of radiation exposure, the roentgen (R), is also named after him.

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