The day I discovered X-rays by accident
On November 8, 1895, Röntgen never thought that he would discover X-rays (Deutsche Welle)
129 years ago, physicist Conrad Röntgen accidentally discovered electromagnetic rays that were unknown to him. Röntgen did not know that he had discovered X-rays, which would play a major role in the fields of medicine, industry, and security to this day.
On November 8, 1895, physics professor Conrad Röntgen never imagined that he would discover X-rays.
Röntgen was working in his laboratory at the Institute of Physics at Julius-Maximilian University on cathode tubes, trying to monitor the lights coming from his experiment on these tubes, and he noticed that a glass at a long distance that the light should not have reached began to radiate even though there was a wooden board and a sheet of carbon between the radiation source. And the glass.
Roentgen was astonished. For weeks, he did not leave his laboratory, which was located above his bedroom, and continued to investigate the cause of this phenomenon.
Röntgen later called the electromagnetic rays he discovered in English “X-rays” - meaning x-rays in Arabic - while in Germany they were called “Röntgen rays” after their discoverer.
Konrad Röntgen, Professor of Physics at the University of Würzburg (Deutsche Welle)
Röntgen took the first photograph of a human body on December 22, 1895, of his wife's hand. In 1901 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
In World War I, doctors began to use X-rays on a large scale, not only to detect fractures, but even to examine bacterial infections. Today, x-rays are also used during operations. Even in the field of security inspection, X-rays are used to examine bags, and in the industrial field, X-rays are used to examine materials as well.
Until the mid-1950s, doctors used radiation without reservation about its side effects, but doctors and physicists discovered that excessive exposure to radiation could cause cancer.
Roentgen died in 1923 at the age of 77 after suffering from colon cancer. But his disease was not a result of his exposure to radiation, because he was exposed to relatively small doses of it.
Source: Deutsche Welle