[6][7] He was born to Friedrich Conrad Röntgen, a German merchant and cloth manufacturer, and Charlotte Constanze Frowein.

Upon hearing that he could enter the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zürich (today known as the ETH Zurich), he passed the entrance examination and began his studies there as a student of mechanical engineering.

[8] In 1869, he graduated with a PhD from the University of Zurich; once there, he became a favourite student of Professor August Kundt, whom he followed to the newly founded German Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität in Strasbourg.

He accepted an appointment at Columbia University in New York City and bought transatlantic tickets, before the outbreak of World War I changed his plans.

During 1895, at his laboratory in the Würzburg Physical Institute of the University of Würzburg, Röntgen was investigating the external effects of passing an electrical discharge through various types of vacuum tube equipment—apparatuses from Heinrich Hertz, Johann Hittorf, William Crookes, Nikola Tesla and Philipp von Lenard[12][13] In early November, he was repeating an experiment with one of Lenard's tubes in which a thin aluminium window had been added to permit the cathode rays to exit the tube but a cardboard covering was added to protect the aluminium from damage by the strong electrostatic field that produces the cathode rays.

As he passed the Ruhmkorff coil charge through the tube, he determined that the cover was light-tight and turned to prepare for the next step of the experiment.

In the following weeks, he ate and slept in his laboratory as he investigated many properties of the new rays he temporarily termed "X-rays", using the mathematical designation ("X") for something unknown.

At one point, while he was investigating the ability of various materials to stop the rays, Röntgen brought a small piece of lead into position while a discharge was occurring.

Röntgen's original paper, "On A New Kind of Rays" (Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen), was published on 28 December 1895.

He also received the Rumford Medal of the British Royal Society in 1896, jointly with Philipp Lenard, who had already shown that a portion of the cathode rays could pass through a thin film of a metal such as aluminium.

[16] Today, Röntgen is considered the father of diagnostic radiology, the medical speciality which uses imaging to diagnose disease.

They became engaged in 1869 and wed in Apeldoorn, Netherlands on 7 July 1872; the delay was due to Anna being six years Wilhelm's senior and his father not approving of her age or humble background.

[18] With the inflation following World War I, Röntgen fell into bankruptcy, spending his final years at his country home at Weilheim, near Munich.

Like Marie and Pierre Curie, Röntgen refused to take out patents related to his discovery of X-rays, as he wanted society as a whole to benefit from practical applications of the phenomenon.

In Würzburg, where he discovered X-rays, a non-profit organization maintains his laboratory and provides guided tours to the Röntgen Memorial Site.