Wilhelm Röntgen was responsible for one of the most important discoveries in
science of the nineteenth century: the (1)__________________.
Röntgen was born in (2)__________________ , the son of a cloth merchant in
Germany. The family moved to Holland when he was young, and he later went
to Switzerland, where he studied (3)__________________. He was awarded a
doctorate at the age of 24, and went on to hold the position of
(4)__________________ at several German universities. Röntgen became known
as an outstanding experimentalist.
Röntgen became interested in how electricity could (5)__________________. He
set up experiments using a tube which contained a (6)__________________ and
observed what happened when negative, or cathode, rays struck the metal. In
order to detect if any rays passed out of the tube, he set up a
(7)__________________ covered in barium salt which would glow if it was struck
by the rays. One day in 1895, he was setting up a new experiment, and darkened
the room before switching on the electrical current in his apparatus. To his great
surprise he noticed that the barium-covered screen was glowing brightly, even
though it was about two meters away from his apparatus. Röntgen knew that
cathode rays could only travel (8)__________________ so he realized that he had
stumbled across something new and very exciting.
Röntgen spent the next few weeks studying these strange rays intensively. He
was particularly impressed with how they could pass through objects. For
example, he held up a thousand-page book, and observed that the rays passed
right through it, leaving almost no shadow on the screen behind it. However,
when Röntgen held his own hand in front of the screen, he saw that the bones of
the hand showed up against the lighter shadow of the rest of the hand.
Röntgen became convinced that these rays were part of the electromagnetic
spectrum and were a form of radiation, but he was not yet able to prove this
conclusively. He published a paper entitled (9)__________________ and
accompanied this with the first published X-ray picture, of
(10)__________________ , which showed clearly the bones and wedding ring she
was wearing. Röntgen called these new rays (11)__________________, or
unknown rays. Although they were later renamed “Röntgen rays” after him, the
name X-ray stuck, and has been used ever since
The medical and scientific world immediately recognised that these new rays
which could allow doctors to see right through the body, were extremely
important in diagnosing (12)__________________. In fact, X-rays were put to
almost immediate international use, and a hospital in America used X-rays to
(13)__________________ a broken leg just two months after Röntgen’s work was
published.
In 1901, Röntgen was awarded the very first (14)__________________. He died in
1923 at the age of (15)__________________ , and X-rays were used for vital later
work in the fields of radioactivity by Pierre and (16)__________________, and
also in crystallography and molecular biology, which includes the study of DNA.