R�ntgen or Roentgen, Wilhelm Konrad von 1845-1923
German physicist and Nobel Prize winner

Born in Lennep, Prussia (now Remscheid, Germany), he studied mechanical engineering at Zurich, and after teaching at Strassburg University, he was appointed Professor of Physics successively at the universities of Giessen (1879), W�rzburg (1888), where he succeeded Friedrich Kohlrausch, and Munich (1899-1919). At W�rzburg in 1895 he discovered the electromagnetic rays which he called X-rays (known also as R�ntgen rays), so called because of their unknown properties; for his work on them he was awarded the Rumford Medal in 1896, jointly with Philipp Lenard, and in 1901 the first Nobel Prize for physics. He also achieved important results on the heat conductivity of crystals, the specific heat of gases, and the magnetic effects produced in dielectrics.