Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German mechanical engineer and physicist who received the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays. He was born on March 27, 1845, in Lennep, Prussia, and studied at the Polytechnic in Zurich. He became a professor of physics at several universities in Germany and Switzerland, and conducted experiments on electricity, magnetism, heat, and light. On November 8, 1895, he accidentally discovered a new kind of radiation that could penetrate opaque objects and produce images of their inner structures. He named them X-rays, because their nature was unknown. He published his findings in a paper titled "On a New Kind of Rays" and sent copies to several prominent scientists. His discovery caused a sensation in the scientific world and the public, and he received many honors and awards for his achievement. He also donated his Nobel Prize money to his university and refused to patent his invention. He continued his research on X-rays until his death from intestinal cancer on February 10, 1923, in Munich. He was buried in Giessen, where he had been a professor for 20 years. His discovery of X-rays opened up new fields of science and medicine, such as X-ray astronomy and radiology, and revolutionized diagnostic and therapeutic methods.