Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2001;84:F138-F139
( March )
Perinatal lessons from the past
Wilhelm Conrad Röentgen (1845-1923), the discovery of
x rays and perinatal
diagnosis
Peter M Dunn
Department of
Child Health, University of Bristol, Southmead Hospital, Southmead,
Bristol BS10 5NB, UK
Correspondence to: Professor Dunn email: p.m.dunn@bristol.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Wilhelm Röentgen's serendipitous discovery of
x rays provided medicine and especially
perinatal medicine with a powerful new investigative tool. Röentgen
was born in the Rhineland town of Lennep on 27 March 1845. His German
father Friedrich and Dutch mother Charlotte were cousins, coming from a
well known family of merchants.1 When Wilhelm was three,
the family moved to Apeldoorn in the Netherlands and, at the age of 16 he attended the Utrecht Technical School. Expelled because of a prank,
he then entered the Polytechnic School in Zurich in 1865, where three years later he acquired a diploma in engineering. The following year,
under the direction of A E E Kundt, he obtained a PhD for studies on
the properties of gases. When Kundt moved to the University of
Würzburg as professor of physics in 1870, Röengten accompanied him
as his assistant, and likewise on to Strasbourg where he was appointed
first privat-dozent, and then in . . . [Full text of this article]
