High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Radiobiology (also known as radiation biology), as a field of clinical and basic medical sciences, originated from Leopold Freund`s 1896 demonstration of the therapeutic treatment of a hairy mole using a new type of electromagnetic radiation called x-rays, which was discovered 1 year previously by the German physicist, Wilhelm Rontgen. At the same time, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive polonium and radium later used to treat cancer. In simplest terms, radiobiology is the study of the action of ionizing radiation on living things.