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2026-10-06 PubMed Central: Busch 2023, "Claims of priority - The scientific path to the discovery of X-rays"

URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10311274/ Citation: U. Busch, Z Med Phys 33(2) (2023) 230-242, doi:10.1016/j.zemedi.2022.12.002 (open access). Author is at the Deutsches Röntgen-Museum (per the figure credits) [web]. Query (Google): Crookes "radiant matter" Goldstein Hertz cathode rays controversy molecules versus ether waves.

Found [web]

  • Section 2.5 on Crookes: calls him "chemist, physicist and parapsychologist"; credits him with the shadow-casting cross and with "a fourth state of matter"; quotes Crookes noticing fogging of photographic plates: "[...] the walls of tube emit blue light and the photographic plates show 'foggy' shadows [...]", cited to the 1879 Sheffield lecture (ref. 7). Note: the deep read of the project's copy of the lecture does not list any photographic-plate observation [read: deep read, "What is not in the document"]. The quote's real source needs checking; it may come from another Crookes paper.
  • Section 2.4: Hittorf (1869) had already found straight-line travel, glass fluorescence and shadows of a foil, and treated the rays as "a simple negative current"; Plücker and Hittorf on magnetic deflection earlier.
  • Section 2.6: Goldstein named "cathode rays" (1876), found emission perpendicular to the cathode surface (1876), interpreted them "in the tradition of Hermann Helmholtz - as ether phenomena", and "had a scientific dispute about the corpuscular nature of cathode rays" with Crookes. Goldstein reference: Monatsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin 1876, 279-295.
  • Section 2.7: Johann Puluj (Prague/Vienna) "rejected the Crookes hypothesis of a fourth state of matter", describing it "as 'transcendental' with an inclination towards spiritualism"; proposed instead charged particles torn mechanically from the electrodes ("radiant electrode matter"). Monograph: J. Puluj, "Strahlende Elektrodenmaterie und der sogenannte vierte Aggregatzustand", Carl Gerold Sohn, Wien 1883; papers 1880-1882 in the Vienna Berichte.
  • Section 3.1: J. J. Thomson 1897 (Phil. Mag. 44, 293-316) measured mass-to-charge ratio, about 1/2000 of hydrogen, and cites Johnstone Stoney's 1878 (sic) proposal of the "electron".

Bearing on the claims

  • Claim 3 (straight lines, normal emission, shadows): the same properties were reported earlier by Hittorf (1869) and Goldstein (1876). This bears on priority, not on whether the observations hold.
  • Claims 1 and 4 (fourth state; negatively charged molecules): Puluj's 1883 monograph is a contemporary alternative particle theory (electrode matter, not gas molecules) and a contemporary critic's characterisation of Crookes's view ("transcendental"). Goldstein's ether-wave school is the contemporary opposing theory. Both are related work for reviewers.
  • Lead: the photographic-plate fogging quote attributed to the 1879 lecture is not in the project's copy; check where it is from.