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X-rays were discovered by the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895. Röntgen was working on experiments with cathode ray tubes, which produce a beam of electrons, when he noticed that a fluorescent screen in his laboratory began to glow whenever the cathode ray tube was turned on. This puzzled him, as the screen was several meters away from the tube and was shielded by a lead plate. Röntgen realized that the glowing was caused by a previously unknown type of radiation, which he called X-rays because they were “unknown” at the time. He published his findings in a paper titled “On a New Kind of Rays,” which quickly gained attention and led to further research on X-rays and their potential applications. Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays.