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 equivalent man as the unit of equivalent dose in 1962 to measure the way different types of radiation distribute energy in tissue, and began recommending values of relative biological effectiveness (RBE) for various types of radiation. In practice, the unit of rem was used to denote that an RBE factor had been applied to a number which was originally in units of rad or roentgen. In 1977 the rem was redefined by the ICRP as 0.01 sievert or 0.01 J/kg, with the intention that the sievert would come to replace the rem. The International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) adopted the