Today (March 27, 1845) is the Birthday
of Willem Röntgen, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery
of X-rays.
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was born on March 27, 1845, in Lennie, Bavaria, Germany, the only son of Friedrich Conrad Röntgen, a textile merchant and businessman. His mother was Charlotte Consitas Froven from Amsterdam. In 1848 they emigrated to Apeldoorn, the Netherlands for business. Rontgen attended elementary school at a private school in Apeldoorn and from 1861 to 1863 at the Utrecht College of Technology. He was expelled from the college for allegedly drawing a picture of a schoolteacher with disrespect to him and for refusing to identify who he was. He was then unable to attend any of the other Dutch Gymnasium schools. In 1865, he studied engineering at the Federal Polytechnic College in Zurich. He received his doctorate in 1869 from the University of Zurich. On July 7,1872 he married Anna Bertha Ludwig. Since they had no children, they adopted and raised Anna's niece, Josephine Bertha Ludwig.
In 1874 he joined Robert Kund in the newly started field of physics at the University of Strasbourg, France. He worked at the University of Wurttemberg in 1875, at the University of Okinawa, at the University of Strasbourg in 1876, and at the University of Kaisen in Germany from 1879 to 1885. In 1888 he was head of the Department of Physics at the University of Wurttemberg. He joined the University of Munich in 1900 and was the head of the physics department there until his death.
Studies were underway in several laboratories on how electrification occurs in low-pressure gases. 1895 While studying the various external effects of vacuum tube equipment he found a barium platinocyanide coated card glowing near the negative rays generated. Following that he did some more experiments in the darkroom and realized that this glow was due to an invisible type of radiation. However, he named it X-rays because of their unknown properties. And then the name stuck. He discovered this on November 8, 1895. Two weeks later he had his first X-ray shot of his wife's hand.
Röntgen published an original article entitled A New Type of Rays on December 28, 1895. On January 5, 1896, an Austrian newspaper Röntgen published his discovery of a new type of radiation. He published three research papers on X-rays from 1895 to 1897. Today Röntgen is known as the father of radiation medical testing. Röntgen never claimed patents for his inventions. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. He donated the money he received from the Nobel Prize to the University of Wurzburg. In 1896 he received the Rumford Prize and the Matteucci Medal.
Due to poverty during World War I, Röntgen spent his final years in the village of Weideme, near Munich. Röntgen died of bowel cancer on February 10, 1923. After his death, his personal and all scientific equipment was destroyed at his will.
Today the Dutch Röntgen Museum is located in his hometown of Remskit-Lenneprandken, 40 kilometres east of Dsseldorf. In many languages, the name Rondken is used in response to the name "X-ray" to refer to radiation therapy and its products. "Randoken" in Japanese, "Randkeno" in Lithuanian, "Rentken" in Serbian, Croatian and Hebrew, and "Rondken" in Turkish. In November 2004, the element rhondconium was named after him.
Source By: Wikipedia.
Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti.
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