Luis W. Alvarez AKA Luis Walter Alvarez Born: 13-Jun-1911 Birthplace: San Francisco, CA Died: 1-Sep-1988 Location of death: Berkeley, CA Cause of death: Cancer - unspecified Remains: Cremated (ashes scattered over California's Monterey Bay)
Gender: Male Religion: Agnostic Race or Ethnicity: Hispanic Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Physicist, Inventor Nationality: United States Executive summary: Particle accelerator, extinction of dinosaurs In 1938 American physicist Luis W. Alvarez discovered the K-electron capture process, in which the absorption of one of the electrons in the first orbital of the nuclear shell causes some atomic nuclei to decay. In 1939, working with Felix Bloch, he obtained the first precise measurement of the neutron's magnetic moment (spin and magnetic characteristics). During World War II he worked on microwave radar research, then joined the American project to develop atomic weapons. He helped design the detonating device used in the first plutonium bomb, and flew aboard the Enola Gay as it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the first use of an atomic weapon in wartime.
Returning to Berkeley after the war, he designed and oversaw construction of the first proton linear accelerator, completed in 1947. In 1951 he proposed charge exchange acceleration, which led to construction of the first Tandem Van de Graaf accelerator and a 72-inch liquid hydrogen bubble chamber, much larger than previous such devices, in 1959. In 1958 he invented a stroboscopic golf-trainer to help analyze and improve his golf swing. In 1968 he invented a stabilizing optical system for binoculars and cameras, and in the same year he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1968. Still, arguably his best known scientific accomplishment was yet to come.
In 1980, collaborating with his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, he proposed that repercussions from an asteroid or comet impacting the Earth caused the extinction of dinosaurs. Alvarez's theory, which has been increasingly accepted, postulates that the asteroid impact caused dense clouds of dust which blocked sunshine worldwide, darkening and cooling the Earth, and that accumulated greenhouse gases after the dust settled then caused temperatures to rapidly rise past pre-impact levels, a traumatic swing of circumstance that caused the extinction of about 70% of plants and animal species, including the dinosaurs and other large mammals.
His father was a research physician at the Mayo Clinic, the namesake of an abdominal ailment called Alvarez' syndrome, and after retiring from medicine he became a widely-syndicated newspaper columnist. The younger Alvarez studied under Arthur H. Compton at the University of Chicago, and his sister was Ernest Lawrence's secretary, which helped him land his first job at Lawrence's lab the University of California at Berkeley immediately after earning his doctorate. Friends, family, and students called him "Luie". Father: Walter Clement Alvarez (physician/newspaper columnist, b. 1884, d. 1978) Mother: Harriet Skidmore Smythe Sister: Gladys Alvarez Mead Wife: Geraldine Smithwick (m. 1936, div.) Son: Walter (geologist) Daughter: Jean Wife: Janet L. Landis (m. 1958) Son: Donald Daughter: Helen
High School: Polytechnic High School, San Francisco, CA (attended) High School: Rochester High School, Rochester, MN (1928) University: BS Physics, University of Chicago (1932) University: MS Physics, University of Chicago (1934) University: PhD Physics, University of Chicago (1936) Teacher: Physics, University of California at Berkeley (1936-45) Scholar: Radiation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1940-43) Scholar: Metallurgical Laboratory, University of Chicago (1943-45) Professor: Physics, University of California at Berkeley (1945-78)
Robert J. Collier Aviation Trophy 1946
Presidential Medal for Merit 1947
John Scott Medal 1953
California Scientist of the Year 1960
Albert Einstein Award 1961
AIEEE Pioneer Award 1963
National Medal of Science 1964 CMG Albert Abraham Michelson Award 1965
Nobel Prize for Physics 1968 National Inventors Hall of Fame 1978 Dudley Wright Prize in Interdisciplinary Science 1981
Enrico Fermi Award 1987 American Academy of Arts and Sciences American Philosophical Society American Physical Society President, 1969 JASON National Academy of Sciences Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society Phi Beta Kappa Society Member of the Board of Hewlett-Packard
Manhattan Project Los Alamos, NM (1943-45) Traveled to the USSR May-1956 Brain Surgery 1987 Cuban Ancestry
Spanish Ancestry
Author of books:
Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (1987, memoir) Discovering Alvarez: Selected Works of Luis W. Alvarez (1987)
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