Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) of San Francisco, California, USA, was a famed physicist who worked at the University of California, Berkeley.
Alvarez won the 1968Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis". Specifically, his research made it possible to record and study the short lived particles created in particle accelerators.
Alvarez and his student Lawrence Johnston designed the detonators for the spherical implosives used on the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs.[1] (http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/welcome/history/21_implosion.html)
With geologist son Walter, in 1980, Luis proposed the asteroid-impact theory to explain the iridium anomaly of the K-T extinction boundary. Ten years later, highly convincing evidence was presented showing that a huge impact crater called Chicxulub was, in fact, the "smoking gun" of the K-T boundary. This impact by an extraterrestrial body is now widely accepted as causing the extinction that killed the dinosaurs.
Alvarez also proposed a jet-recoil theory to explain why John F. Kennedy's head jerked backwards if Lee Harvey Oswald, shooting from behind the president, was the assassin.
Further reading
Alvarez, Luis W. Alvarez: Adventure of a Physicist, New York: Basic Books, 1987, ISBN 0465001157
External links
Nobel biography (http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1968/alvarez-bio.html)
About Luis Alvarez (http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/luis_walter_alvarez.html)
IEEE interview w/ Johnston (http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/johnston.html), patentholder of the exploding-bridgewire detonator
Alvarez won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis".
In 1980, with his son WalterAlvarez, a geologist, Luis proposed the asteroid-impact theory to explain the iridium anomaly of the K-T extinction boundary, the observed increased abundance of iridium in strata of that time.
Alvarez also proposed a jet-recoil theory for the Kennedy assassination to explain why John F. Kennedy's head jerked backwards if Lee Harvey Oswald, shooting from behind the president, was the assassin.
Born in San Francisco, Alvarez graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in 1932 and a Ph.D. (physics) in 1936.
He was an assistant physics instructor from 1936 to 1938; an associate professor from 1938 to 1945; associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory from 1954 to 1959; and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1945.
Alvarez was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1971 to 1972.
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