Wilhelm Roentgen taking an X-ray. Cartoon of German physicist, Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (1845- 1923) taking an X-ray of a farmer. The resulting image appears on the right. Roentgen was professor of physics at Wurzburg. While using an electric discharge tube in a darkened room, he noticed that a card coated with barium platinocyanide glowed when the tube was switched on. The effect was not blocked by an intervening wall, or even a thin sheet of metal. Roentgen termed this newly discovered phenomenon X-ray radiation, & suggested they were short wave electromagnetic rays. The first X-ray he took was of his wife's hand. He was awarded the first Nobel Prize for physics in 1901.