Discovery of X-rays

Professor Röntgen changes medicine

Born in 1845, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen studied mechanical engineering and physics, but having never passed the right examinations, it took him until 1888 to get a job as a professor at the University of Würzburg. Only seven years later, he discovered something that he called “X-rays”.

On 23 January 1895, Röntgen presented his discovery to the Physical Medical Society at the University of Würzburg, where his learned audience quickly understood the potential for taking pictures inside the human body as an aid to diagnosis. Awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, Röntgen’s work not only revolutionized medicine, but led to other scientific achievements such as the discovery of radioactivity.