1875-1900(wolfe.defoe)

Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen was a very well known physicist, born in Prussia on March 27, 1845. Over his illustrious career he served as the Chair of the physics department at three German state universities and was offered the position at six other prestigious German schools in addition to the presidency at the German Physico-Technical Institute. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize for physics in 1901 for his discovery of the x-ray. He died on February 10, 1923 of intestinal cancer, though it was probably not because of his exposure to radioactive materials, as he was known to use lead shields to protect himself.

Röntgen’s greatest discovery was the form of electromagnetic radiation that travels in a high frequency wavelength range known as the x-ray, which was the reason for his receipt of the Nobel Prize. He was studying cathode rays, or the phenomenon of the movement of electrical currents through gases at low pressures, when he noticed that a discharge tube contained in a light blocking container would cause a plate containing barium platinocyanide to fluoresce if the tube was pointed at it at distances within six and a half feet. Röntgen, brilliant man that he was, had his wife immobilize her hand in front of a photographic plate in the path of the discharge tube to see what would happen. After studying the developed plate, he noticed that a dark shade in the shape of the bones in his wife’s hand and the ring she was wearing, surrounded by a fainter shadow thrown by her hand, had appeared on the plate. This image shocked the world, and Röntgen was greeted as a hero around the world for his bold discovery.

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The First X-Ray
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[] ==Anyone who supports nuclear energy as a superior form of power generation can thank Henri Becquerel for discovering the phenomenon that can generate immense amounts of electricity from a very small fuel source. He was born on December 15, 1852 and died August 25, 1908, during which he earned many accolades for his work in physics and chemistry. Becquerel served as the Chair of physics at the French Museum of Natural History, France Polytechnic Institute, and the National Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences, in addition to being a member of the French Academy of Sciences. Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Pierre and Marie Curie in 1903 for their discovery of radiation.== ==The discovery of radiation was accidental; Becquerel was experimenting with uranium salts to see if other elements give off some kind of phosphorescence, like the material Röntgen used to produce his x-rays. At first, Becquerel placed the uranium salts in the sunlight for a few hours, and then placed them on top of the photographic plates with a coin on top; after developing them, he saw the shadow of the coin, which proved that the salts were giving off some kind of light. The next time Becquerel attempted to repeat his experiment, it was a cloudy day and there was no sunlight to illuminate the uranium salts, so he placed the photographic plates with the salts on top in a drawer. Three days later he developed the plates, expecting to see only weak outlines of the salts; instead he found that the plates were considerably darkened. This proved that the uranium salts gave off energy regardless of exposure to sun, which paved the way for other scientists to use these elements to produce large amounts of usable energy. == []

James Clerk Maxwell is considered the father of modern physics, probably because his education began at a very young age. He was born on June 13, 1831 in Scotland and began attending the Edinburgh Academy at the age of 10, where some of his early math and physics work was submitted to the Royal Society of Edinburgh for review. This trend of high profile work would only continue; many of Maxwell’s ideas help make several different types of modern technology possible. Maxwell died on November 5, 1879 in England.

Maxwell’s most important contributions to chemistry and physics involved his work with electromagnetism and the kinetic theory of gases. He was one of the first to believe that the molecules found in gases moved constantly at very high speeds. Highlights from his research include proof of the existence of electric and magnetic fields complete with equations that described their behavior. Maxwell also proposed that light is a form of electromagnetism because electromagnetic radiation spreads at the same speed of light, and that this visible light makes up only a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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