Roentgen, Wilhelm Conrad
Roentgen, Wilhelm Conrad (1845-1923), German physicist, discoverer of X rays , and winner of the first Nobel Prize in physics. Roentgen's discovery of X rays was a momentous advance for physics and medicine and earned him the 1901 Nobel Prize in physics. Roentgen was born in Lennep, Germany, and grew up in the Netherlands. He earned a mechanical engineering degree at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1868 and a Ph.D. degree in physics at the University of Zürich in 1869. Roentgen worked as a laboratory assistant at the University of Würzburg in Germany from 1868 to 1872 and at the University of Strasbourg in Germany from 1872 to 1874. He began teaching physics in 1874, starting at the University of Strasbourg, then moving to the Agricultural Academy in Hohenheim, Germany, in 1875, and back to Strasbourg in 1876. In 1879 he became a professor of physics at the University of Giessen in Germany, where he remained until 1888, when he became professor of phy