Wilhelm Roentgen Biography

Wilhelm Konrad von Roentgen (Röntgen) was born in lower Germany on March 27, 1845. His mother, Charlotte Constanze Frowein and his father were manufactures and merchants in cloth. When he was three, the family moved to the Netherlands where Roentgen lived and spent his early years. He went to Martinus Herman van Doorn boarding school, where he didn’t excel or stand out as the smartest student, but this school gave him his love for nature and physics. After graduating from boarding school, Roentgen attended a technical school in Utrecht in 1862. He was expelled from this school soon after for being wrongfully convicted of drawing a caricature of a teacher. After this unfortunate event, Roentgen in 1865 enrolled in the University of Utrecht to study physics and graduated in 1869 with a Ph.D. This gave him the opportunity to work in Germany as the director of the Physical Institute of the University of Würzburg. Wilhelm first wrote and published work about specific heats and gases in 1870, which led him into researching cathode rays and electromagnetic influenced on polarized light. In the midst of all his groundbreaking research, Roentgen was married in 1872 to Anna Bertha Ludwig. Anna and Wilhelm had no children except Anna’s niece that they adopted. Soon after his marriage in 1985, Roentgen’s greatest discovery came when he discovered X-rays. He was highly praised for this discovery and was offered a job at the University of Munich in 1900 where he stayed for the rest of his life even with many other great offers thrown his way. He was awarded so many honors and prizes for this magnificent discovery. Although in 1901 Roentgen received one of the greatest honors a physicist can get; he was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics. He stayed humble throughout the process and continued his love for nature. Throughout his life Roentgen was a great mountaineer that he even purchased a summer home in the Alps to stay. Wilhelm’s wonderful life and career came to an end in Munich on Feburary 10, 1923 when he died from intestinal complications.