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) of temperature and pressure." Using 1 esu ≈ 3.33564 C and the air density of ~1.293 kg/m³ at 0 °C and 101 kPa, this converts to 2.58 × 10 C/kg, which is the modern value given by NIST. 1 × 3.33564 × 10 × 1,000,000 ÷ 1.293 = 2.58 × 10 This definition was used under different names (e, R, and German unit of radiation) for the next 20 years. In the meantime, the French Roentgen was given a different definition which amounted to 0.444 German R. In 1928, the International Congress of Radiology (ICR) defined the roentgen as "the