Channeling radiation as a source of hard x-rays with high spectral brilliance

Abstract

Starting with Bragg’s introduction of crystallography in 1912, Moseley’s ordering of the chemical elements in 1913, and Compton’s discovery of the momentum of a photon, much of what we’ve learned about the physical world in the last century has been learned using x-rays. X-rays are now an indispensable tool in materials science and protein crystallography. In medicine, too, we’ve progressed from Roentgen’s 1895 shadow images of the bones in his hand to 3-D computerized tomography.