Roentgen (unit) One roentgen deposits of absorbed dose in dry air, or in soft tissue. One roentgen of X-rays may deposit anywhere from in bone depending on the beam energy. This tissue-dependent conversion from kerma to absorbed dose is called the F-factor in radiotherapy contexts. The conversion depends on the ionizing energy of a reference medium, which is ambiguous in the latest NIST definition. The roentgen has its roots in the Villard unit defined in 1908 by the American Roentgen Ray Society as "the quantity of radiation which liberates by ionisation one esu of electricity per cm of air under normal conditions
Discovery of the neutron elements by neutron irradiation (1934) and the fission of uranium atoms by neutrons (1938). The discovery of fission led to the creation of both nuclear power and weapons by the end of World War II. Both the proton and neutron were presumed to be elementary particles until the 1960s when they were determined to be composite particles built from quarks. At the start of the 20th century, the vigorous debate as to the existence of atoms had not yet been resolved. Philosophers such as Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald denied that atoms were real, viewing them as a convenient mathematical