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Conrad Wilhelm Roentgen
It is said that in the late autumn of 1892 Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845-1923) shut himself up in his laboratory at the University of Würzburg for several weeks. The physicist, who received his doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1869, tracked down the mysterious rays with which glass bodies can be made.
On December 22, 1895, he radiated for several minutes the hand of his wife Bertha, whom he had met at the “Restaurant zum Grünen Glas” in Zurich. The result of the radiation was probably the first X-ray image of a part of the human body: the bones of Bertha’s hand with her wedding ring, which appears to float around her ring finger.
The 82-year-old Californian neurologist Frank Wilson, whose great-grandmother was Röntgen’s cousin, received the family heirloom from his aunt in the late 1970s. The year of Bertha and Wilhelm’s engagement (1869) and “FRöntgen” is engraved on the ring, a reference to Ferdinand Röntgen, Wilhelm’s uncle. Swiss engraver Mechthild Marthy discovered that the elaborate engraving was done by hand by a specialist without a magnifying glass.
The ring was examined by other specialists and historians in Switzerland, Germany and the United States. So it seems to be real and actually Bertha’s ring. However: “Over time and based on the evidence, my opinion on the issue of authenticity has come and gone,” Wilson wrote when asked by Keystone-SDA.
Together with his cousin Allison Röntgen Stabile, he searched for written evidence that recounted the origins and transmission of the ring in the family. In March 2019, Wilson traveled from the US via Düsseldorf to Switzerland to analyze the genetic traces of the ring engraving in the DNA laboratory of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Zurich. But after a nap on the train, the ring that was in Wilson’s backpack disappeared. The neurologist immediately reported the robbery to the police. But the unique family heirloom has not appeared to this day.
So the search for clues came to an abrupt end. “It’s a shame,” said Cordula Haas, a Zurich forensic specialist. Their goal was to extract human cells from the ring etch and obtain mitochondrial genetic material from them. Unlike the DNA of chromosomes, this DNA is not passed from both parents, but only from the mother to her child.
“Since Anna Bertha Röntgen used the famous X-ray imaging ring for many years, we could have found her genetic material in it,” Haas said. According to tradition, the ring was given to Anna Bertha by the family of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. Therefore, the mitochondrial DNA of Anna Bertha could have easily been distinguished from the earlier and later owners.
But this is a long way off for the moment. The thief left only the plastic bag that the ring had been in in Wilson’s backpack. You could check for traces of the author on this bag. But according to coroner Haas, that is the province of the German police.
However, she and the Röntgen family hope that the ring will reappear and not melt. Because then it would definitely be too late to get her secret from the supposedly famous ring.
But despite all the anger: Thanks to the ring, Wilson said he had the most fascinating journey of his life – he met places and people that would have otherwise remained hidden. “If I lived long enough, this would be my next book,” Wilson said.
