Wilhelm Röntgen

Hello! My name is Wilhelm Röntgen. I was born a long time ago, on March 27th, 1845, in a country called Germany. When I was a boy, I didn't always enjoy being in school, but I really loved exploring outside in nature. My favorite things to do were building things and trying to figure out how different machines worked. That feeling of wanting to know how things work is called curiosity, and it stayed with me my whole life. It's what helped me decide to become a scientist when I grew up.

As an adult, I became a professor, which is like a teacher at a university, and I had my very own laboratory. It was my favorite place in the whole world! My lab was filled with all sorts of interesting things, like special glass tubes, many different wires, and cool machines. I loved doing experiments to learn new things about how our world works. I would spend many, many hours in my lab, carefully testing my ideas to see what would happen.

One evening, on November 8th, 1895, I was working late in my dark laboratory. I was busy with an experiment using a special glass tube that I had covered up with thick, black paper so no light could get out. All of a sudden, I saw something strange. Across the room, a screen began to glow with a faint green light! I was so surprised because nothing was supposed to be shining on it. I realized that I must have discovered some new, invisible rays that were so powerful they could pass right through the paper. Because they were such a mystery, I decided to call them 'X-rays'.

I was so excited about my discovery! I had to show someone what these new rays could do. I asked my wife, Anna, if I could take a special picture of her hand using them. She agreed, and when we looked at the picture, we were amazed. We could see all the bones inside her hand, and we could even see the ring she was wearing on her finger! It was the very first X-ray picture ever taken of a person. In 1901, I was given a very special award called the Nobel Prize for this important discovery.

I lived to be 77 years old. My discovery of X-rays changed the world in a big way. Today, doctors and dentists use X-ray machines every single day to look inside our bodies. They can find broken bones or see what is making someone feel sick. I am so happy that my curious experiment in a dark lab all those years ago still helps so many people get well all over the world.