Previous Year Question

German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered a new type of penetrating radiation on 8 November 1895, which he called X-rays because their nature was initially unknown.

Röntgen was experimenting with a cathode-ray tube when he noticed that a nearby fluorescent screen glowed even though the tube was covered. Further experiments demonstrated that these invisible rays could pass through many materials, while dense structures such as bones absorbed them more strongly.

He also produced the famous X-ray image of the hand of his wife, Anna Bertha Röntgen, in which the bones and a ring were visible. This opened the way for the medical diagnostic use of X-rays.

For this discovery, Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.