Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895. He was a German physicist at the University of Würzburg who observed that a fluorescent screen glowed when positioned near a sealed cathode-ray tube, even with shielding between the tube and the screen. This led him to identify and name the new form of radiation "X-rays," and he published the first paper on the subject later that year. Röntgen’s discovery earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
