Röntgen equivalent physical

The Röntgen equivalent physical or rep (symbol rep) is a unit of absorbed dose first introduced by Herbert Parker in 1945 to replace an improper application of the roentgen unit to biological tissue. It is the absorbed energetic dose before the biological efficiency of the radiation is factored in. The rep has variously been defined as 83 or 93 ergs per gram of tissue (8.3/9.3 mGy) or per cm of tissue. At the time, this was thought to be the amount of energy deposited by 1 roentgen. Improved measurements have since found that one roentgen of air kerma deposits 8.77 mGy in dry air, or 9.6 mGy in soft tissue, but the rep was defined as a fixed number of ergs per unit gram. A 1952 handbook from the US National Bureau of Standards affirms that "The numerical coefficient of the rep has been deliberately changed to 93, instead of the earlier 83, to agree with L. H. Gray's 'energy-unit'." It is unclear what was meant by Gray's 'energy unit', since the gray was not defined until the 1970s; perhaps the gram-roentgen he introduced in 1940? The rep was commonly used until the 1960s, but was gradually displaced by the rad starting in 1954 and later the gray starting in 1977.