IVAN PULUJ AND THE DISCOVERY OF X-RAYS

Abstract

On January 5, 1896, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse published an article entitled “A Sensational Discovery”. It was dedicated to the discovery of X-rays made on November 8, 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. Having taken into account the contribution of other scientists, the precondition of the given epochal, yet unexpected, discovery was, first and foremost, the work of the Ukrainian scientist Ivan Puluj. It was Puluj who laid the foundation for X-ray science. He explained the nature of X-rays, discovered that they can ionize atoms and molecules, and defined the place of X-ray emergence and their distribution in space. In 1881, Puluj constructed a cathode lamp (“Puluj’s tube”) which was fundamentally a new type of light source. In the same year, in recognition of this discovery, Puluj received an award at the International Exhibition in Paris. Investigating the processes in cathode-ray tubes, Ivan Puluj set the stage for two ground-breaking discoveries in physics, namely X-rays and electrons. Puluj used his cathode lamp in medicine as a source of intense X-rays which proved to be highly efficient. The exact date of the first X-ray images received by Puluj remains unknown. High-quality photographs of the hand of an eleven-year-old girl, taken on January 18, 1896, are preserved. Multiple X-ray images clearly visualized pathological changes in the examined structures (fractures, calluses, tuberculous bone lesions). High-quality images were obtained by means of the anticathode in the design of Puluj’s lamp, which was the first in the world. The image of the whole skeleton of a stillborn child (published on April 3, 1896 in The Photogram) is considered to be the starting point of using X-rays in anatomy.