Fluorescent lamp began with the Geissler tube continued as even better vacuums were produced. The most famous was the evacuated tube used for scientific research by William Crookes. That tube was evacuated by the highly effective mercury vacuum pump created by Hermann Sprengel. Research conducted by Crookes and others ultimately led to the discovery of the electron in 1897 by J. J. Thomson and X-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen. But the Crookes tube, as it came to be known, produced little light because the vacuum in it was too good and thus lacked the trace amounts of gas that are needed
Wilhelm Alexander Freund Wilhelm Alexander Freund Wilhelm Alexander Freund (August 26, 1833 - December 24, 1917) was a German gynecologist who was a native of Krappitz, Silesia. Born into a Jewish family, in 1855 he earned his medical degree at the University of Breslau, afterwards practicing gynecology in the same city. In 1874 he became an associate professor at Breslau. In 1879 he relocated to Strasbourg, where he served as a professor of gynecology and obstetrics. He died in Berlin. In January 1878, Freund performed the first abdominal extirpation of a cancerous uterus. Twenty years later in 1898, Austrian gynecologist Ernst Wertheim (1864-1920)