Roentgen equivalent man has been defined since 1976 as equal to 0.01 sievert, which is the more commonly used SI unit outside the United States. A number of earlier definitions going back to 1945 were derived from the roentgen unit, which was named after Wilhelm Röntgen, a German scientist who discovered X-rays. The acronym is now a misleading historical artifact, since 1 roentgen actually deposits about 0.96 rem in soft biological tissue, when all weighting factors equal unity. Older units of rem following other definitions are up to 17% smaller than the modern rem. One rem carries with it a 0.05% chance of
Roentgen (unit) directive included the curie, rad, rem and roentgen as permissible units, but required that the use of the rad, rem and roentgen be reviewed before 31 December 1977. This document defined the roentgen as exactly 2.58 × 10 C/kg, as per the ICRU recommendation. Directive 80/181/EEC, published in December 1979, which replaced directive 71/354/EEC, explicitly catalogued the gray, becquerel and sievert for this purpose and required that the curie, rad, rem and roentgen be phased out by 31 December 1985. Today the roentgen is rarely used, and the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) never accepted the use of