22/12/2025
This is one of the most famous images in photographic history.
The first ever X-ray image was taken on 22 December 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen, awarded the first Nobel Prize in Physics, 1901.
The image of his wife Bertha's hand (wedding ring clearly visible) made Röntgen an international celebrity. The medical implications were immediately realised. Röntgen named the discovery X-radiation, or X-rays, after the mathematical term 'X' which denotes something unknown.