19–23 Jun 2023
Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati INFN
Europe/Rome timezone

Claims of Priority - The scientific path to the discovery of X-rays

20 Jun 2023, 09:30
30m
Aula Salvini (Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati INFN)

Aula Salvini

Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati INFN

Via E. Fermi 54 00044 Frascati (RM)

Speaker

Anna-Katharina Kätker

Description

Shortly after Röntgen's publication about a new kind of rays, a dispute about priority claims began. Röntgen was not the first researcher to produce X-rays nor the first to take X-ray images. An analysis of the history of cathode ray research in the 19th century reveals ample evidence that researchers before Röntgen had already produced X-rays, albeit without knowing this. Most of them, for their part, did not claim any priority, some did so rather casually. The German-Hungarian physicist Philip Lenard, a co-founder of German Physics, considered himself a "true discoverer". It remains to be said, however, that he, like many others before him, failed to recognize the character of the new radiation. It was Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, with his three scientific publications on X-rays, who laid the foundations for their physical clarification and paved the way for the success story of their application in a variety of fields that continues to this day.

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