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) In radiation protection the absorbed dose is the energy absorption which is an indication of likely acute tissue effects occurring at high dose rates, and from low levels of absorbed dose the equivalent dose, representing the stochastic health risk, can be calculated; for which the current SI units used are the gray (Gy) and the sievert (Sv) respectively. The roengten has been redefined over the years. It was last defined by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1998 as , with a recommendation that the definition be given in every document where the roentgen is used.