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Article

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the Glimmer of Light

NOV 01, 1995
A faint fluorescence spied out of the corner of a man’s eye in a darkened laboratory heralded the discovery, one hundred years ago, of ‘a new kind of rays’ that would revolutionize physics and medicine.
Howard H. Seliger

On Friday evening, 8 November 1895, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a 50‐year‐old professor of physics and recently elected rector of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Germany, was unusually late for dinner. And when he did arrive at the family living quarters above his laboratory in the Physical Institute, he did not speak, ate little and then left abruptly to return to the experiments that had so disturbed him that afternoon.

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References

  1. 1. W. C. Röntgen, Sitzungber. Phys.‐Med. Gesellschaft Würzburg, 132 (1895).

  2. 2. The biographical details in this article have been gleaned from the extensive literature on Röntgen including the following publications: O. Glasser, William Conrad Röntgen and the Early History of the Roentgen Rays, Charles C. Thomas, Baltimore, Md. (1934).
    B. Dibner, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and the Discovery of X Rays, Franklin Watts, New York (1968).
    W. R. Nitske, The Life of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Discoverer of the X‐Ray, U. Ariz. P., Tucson (1971).
    R. L. Eisenberg, Radiology: An Illustrated History, Mosby Year Book, St. Louis (1992).

  3. 3. P. Lenard, Sitzungber. Berl. Akad. (12 January 1893);
    Wied. Ann. Phys. 51, 225 (1894).

More about the authors

Howard H. Seliger, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 48, Number 11

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