After a game like football, the players might get an X-ray in the hospital if they hurt their legs or arms. A dentist can use X-rays to look at teeth. And airport workers use an X-ray machine to check objects before a plane leaves. Nowadays, X-ray technology is widely used in medicine and other fields.
X-rays were first discovered by a German scientist, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845 –1923). He found them quite by accident in 1895. One day, he discovered that an unknown kind of radiation (放射线) could hardly pass through hard objects like bones (骨头). Later, Röntgen took a photo of his wife's hand. It clearly showed her ring and her bones. That was the first X-ray photo in the world.
Why is there an "X" in the word X-ray? It's because Röntgen couldn't explain exactly how it worked. He just knew that X-rays were new and useful for science. In fact, X-rays soon became an important tool in medicine. With the help of X-rays, doctors could see inside the human body for the first time without surgery (外科手术).
Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize (诺贝尔奖) in physics in 1901 for his discovery. When he was asked what he was thinking at the moment of discovery, he replied, "I didn't think, I investigated (研究)." Röntgen gave away his Nobel Prize money to his university. And he never took out any patents (专利权) on X-rays, to make sure that the world could freely make use of his discovery.
