Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen was a physicist who had little time for publicity. Like all other scientists the professor from Wurzburg University in Franconia always sought recognition from his peers, but Röntgen rarely appeared at scientific conferences or wrote papers, let alone promoted his research findings outside of his field. All this changed after Rontgen’s accidental discovery of X-rays sparked a media storm that meant his findings would have an impact like no other before it.
On the evening of 8 November 1895, Rontgen was in his laboratory studying how cathode-ray tubes emit light. His attention was distracted by a glowing fluorescent screen that was too far from the tube to be affected by the cathode rays. Rontgen didn’t leave his lab for weeks as he tried to investigate the source of the glow. He discovered that the impact of cathode rays on the glass vacuum tube was generating a new kind of invisible ray. The rays had extraordinary penetrative power – they could travel long distances and make the screen glow, even when cardboard, wood, copper and aluminum were placed in the way – and could be recorded on photographic plates.
Rontgen knew immediately that he had to forego his natural reticence and disseminate this important discovery to the scientific community as soon as possible. Over Christmas, he wrote a 10-page article entitled “On a new kind of rays”, which was accepted by the Proceedings of the Wurzburg Physical-Medical Society on 28 December. Rontgen named the discovery X-radiation, or X-rays, after the mathematical term ‘X’ that denotes something unknown. (He always preferred this term, even though other researchers insisted on calling it Rontgen rays.
Rontgen’s silence could not affect his discovery spreading far and wide within the scientific, and even non-scientific, literature.
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