Alvarez, Luis

Alvarez, Luis Walter (1911-88) US physicist most of whose working life was spent at the University of California, Berkeley. After working on radar and the atomic bomb during World War 11, he concentrated on particle physics. In 1959 he built the first large bubble chamber and developed the technique for using it to study charged particles, for which he was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize for physics. 

LUIS W. ALVAREZ—University of California—Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720... 

Domenech E, Santisteban M, Moya M, Gonzalez C, Cortabarria C, Mendez A, Alvarez J, Rodriguez-Luis JC. Hipertiroidismo neonatal transitorio e hijo de madre hipertiroidea tratada. Posterior aparicion de precocidad sexual. [Transient neonatal hyperthyroidism in the child of a treated hyperthyroid mother. Subsequent appearance of sexual precocity.] An Esp Pediatr 1985 22(4) 281-7. 

Laborde, Carlos M. Mourino-Alvarez, Laura Posada-Ayala, Maria Alvarez-Llamas, Gloria Serranillos-Reus, Manuel Gomez Moreu, Jose Vivanco, Fernando Padial, Luis R. Barderas, Maria G. Metabolomics, in press. 

In 1979 geologist Walter Alvarez and his Nobel Prize-winning physicist father Luis Alvarez suggested that unusually high concentrations of iridium in rocks laid down at the K-T boundary meant that an asteroid had hit the earth, causing tremendous devastation. In the last 20 years much evidence has accumulated to support this hypothesis, including identification of the location of the probable crater caused by the impact in the ocean near Mexico. 

On November 9,1939, Ernest Lawrence (Fig. 7.1.) won the Nobel prize in physics for for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements Two of Lawrence s students at Berkeley, Luis Alvarez and Edwin McMillan, subsequently received the Nobel prize. 

The 60-inch cyclotron group at Berkeley Donald Cooksey, Dale R. Corson, Ernest O. Lawrence, Robert L. Thornton, John Backus, Winfield W. ( W. W ) Salisbury, Luis W Alvarez, and Edwin M. McMillan, 1939 (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)... 

At Berkeley, Lawrence said later, it seemed opportune to review my plans for research, to see whether I might not profitably go into nuclear research, for the pioneer work of Rutherford and his school had clearly indicated that the next great frontier for the experimental physicist was surely the atomic nucleus. But as Luis Alvarez explains, the tedious nature of Rutherford s technique. .. repelled most prospective nuclear physicists. Simple calculations showed that one microampere of electrically accelerated light nuclei would be more valuable than the world s total supply of radium—if the nuclear particles had energies in the neighborhood of a million electron volts. ... 

The San Francisco Chronicle picked up the wire-service story. Luis W. Alvarez, Ernest Lawrence s tall, ice-blond protdgd, a future Nobelist whose father was a prominent Mayo Chnic physician, read it at Berkeley sitting in a barber chair in Stevens Union having his hair cut So [I told] the barber... 

The distant weather planes also heard the radio signal. So did the spare B-29 parked on Iwo Jima. It alerted Luis Alvarez in the observation plane to prepare to film the oscilloscopes he had installed there the radio-linked parachute gauges he had designed to measure Little Boy s explosive yield hung in the bomb bay waiting to drop with the bomb and float down toward the city. 

Teller was thus back at weapons work when Harry Truman announced, on September 23, 1949, the explosion of Joe I, the first Soviet atomic bomb. Like most Americans, Teller had not expected the Soviet success so soon. He called Oppenheimer on the day the Soviet test was announced in a state of arousal sufficient to cause Oppenheimer to advise him sharply, Keep your shirt on. He testified later that his mind did not immediately turn in the direction of working on the thermonuclear bomb, but in fact he discussed that prospect intensely at Los Alamos early in October with Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez, who encouraged him. The American nuclear monopoly had ended. The fabulous monster had real claws. If the Soviet Union had tested an atomic bomb, could a Soviet hydrogen bomb be far behind Teller decided that the only possible hope for continued national security was an all-out American effort to build the Super. 

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