Toby Kim

Born in Germany on March 27, 1845, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen made a fascinating discovery which endowed the mankind with new technology that gave monumental impact on the medical curation of numerous people. In 1895, he discovered a new kind of ray which is now famously known as the x-ray.

In 1895, Rontgen was studying and researching the properties of cathode rays, which were the electric currents going through a gas of extremely low pressure. On one evening, when he was working with tubes, he sucked out all the air from the tube, filled it with a special gas, and passed an electric volt through it. Then, he discovered that tube would glow and found that even when he covered the tube with heavy black paper, a green colored fluorescent light in the tube could be seen from a screen that is a few meters away from the tube. This was when he first encountered the “invisible light” which was able to pass through people and objects. He named this ray as X-ray, because X in physics is used to express unknown quantity.

Rontgen found this discovery very useful to the human society. He realized that x-ray could pass through muscles and tissues of people and show the actual shape of their bones. When he took a picture of his wife’s hand with the x-ray, for instance, he was able to get the picture of the bones of her hand with a ring. Instead of installing x-ray as his own patent, Rontgen freely disseminated the technology of x-ray to all people around the world, which portrays his magnanimous and unselfish characteristics. Still now, x-rays are widely used not only in United States but also in most part of the world to cure diseases such as bone fractures and cancers.

Recognizing Rontgen’s great impact on the medical technology of human history, the Noble Prize association acclaimed his discovery and finally awarded him the Nobel Prize in Physics. We can see from his accomplishments that he certainly has more than enough qualities to receive this honor of Noble prize.