[Circumstances surrounding the discovery of Röntgen rays]

The 8th of November marks the centennial of the discovery of Röntgen rays. This discovery occurred serendipitously during an experiment with cathode rays by the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in Würzburg, Germany. Not many other discoveries in basic natural science have had such an enormous impact and immediate application in medicine. Röntgen had a Dutch connection, since he spent 17 years of his childhood and youth in the Netherlands. In his final school report, the only subject in which the later Nobel prize winner in physics received poor marks was physics! Notes released 70 years after Röntgen received his prize revealed that the Nobel Committee for Physics actually had recommended that the prize be divided equally between Röntgen and Philipp Lenard, another eminent German physicist.