Gray (unit) Gray (unit) The gray (symbol: Gy) is a derived unit of ionizing radiation dose in the International System of Units (SI). It is defined as the absorption of one joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. It is used as a unit of the radiation quantity absorbed dose which measures the energy deposited in a unit mass at a certain position, and of the radiation quantity kerma, which is the amount of energy that is transferred from photons to electrons per unit mass at a certain position. The corresponding cgs unit to the gray is the rad (equivalent to
Rad (unit) in the latest NIST definition. Even where the standard medium is fully defined, the ionizing energy is often not precisely known. In 1940, British physicist Louis Harold Gray, who had been studying the effect of neutron damage on human tissue, together with William Valentine Mayneord and John Read published a paper in which a unit of measure, dubbed the ""gram roentgen"" (symbol: gr) defined as "that amount of neutron radiation which produces an increment in energy in unit volume of tissue equal to the increment of energy produced in unit volume of water by one roentgen of radiation" was proposed.