Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez Dies at 77; Noted For Diverse Career And Controversial Theories

Physicist Luis Walter Alvarez, a age 77, lost a long battle with can cer on September 1,1988—and the scientific community lost one of it most creative and feisty members Luie, as he was known by colleagues and castigators alike, won numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his work in developing, and experimenting with, the hydrogen bubble chamber a device used to track the paths of, and thus identify, elementary particles. But long before that he bad been a key member of the Manhattan Project, working to develop the atomic bomb. And two decades after he received sciences most prestigious award—indeed almost to the day he died—he was at the center of a major scientific controversy (see story below) over the precise cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Two traits help explain why Alvarez had such a long, rich, and unusually diverse career—the twin abilities to tinker and to discover. The physicist, who began a lifelong association with the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, after receiving his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1936, held 40 US. patents and was elected into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1978. During the Second World War, he invented a number of radar systems. In later years, when his eyesight deteriorated, he invented a new system of bifocal lenses. Also during the war, as a senior researcher on the Manhattan Project, Alvarez led the team that discovered the mechanism for detonating a fission weapon—a key to creating the atom bomb. After the war, Alvarez rejoined the faculty at Berkeley and concentrated on linear accelerator investigations. The research was not as fruitful as he had hoped, and as he neared age 40, he realized that he was falling out of the mainstream. “I faced the fact that I was a has been and that my press clippings wouldn’t impress the young,” he relates in his autobiography, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist (Ba- sic Books, 1987). So Alvarez boldly plunged head-first into an entirely new field of research. He conceived, designed, and directed the creation of the first hydrogen bubble chamber, then used the device to investigate what he called “strange” new subatomic particles. This pioneering work led to his Nobel Prize. “Dad was particularly proud of the fact that he was able to yank himself back into the active scientific world,” says Alvarez’s son and colleague Walter, a paleontologist at Berkeley. At an age when most physicists have gone on to adminis tration, my father was rubbing elbows with young scientists.” A tireless researcher with a voracious intellect, Alvarez went on to tackle a wide range of problems. He journeyed to Antarctica to search for mag- netic monopoles; he harnessed cosmic rays to probe the interior of the Second Pyramid of Chephren in Egypt and he helped investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 1980, Alvarez switched gears again and forever changed the science of paleontology. He, his son Walter, and colleagues at Berkeley proposed that a large asteroid slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago, kicking up a dust cloud that drastically altered the climate and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, along with many other species of plants and animals. The “impact hypothesis” called for a radical reinterpretation of the planet’s geological and biological history, and it led to both exciting science and bitter debates. These, in turn, cemented Alvarez’s reputation as both a brilliant scientist and a formidable opponent. But there was another, lesser known side to Alvarez. “I asked him to give a talk about dinosaurs to a group of minority high school students at the DOE’s Science and Technology Week at the end of April in 1987,” recalls Alvin Trivelpiece, the executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who was then assistant secretary for research at the U.S. Department of Energy. “He talked to these kids at great personal inconvenience, and at that point, some physical discomfort from his cancer. He just did it—that’s the way he was.” “Luie bad infinite patience in explaining things,” adds W. Peter Trower, a Virginia Polytechnic Institute physicist and close friend who often worked with Alvarez at Lawrence Berkeley. To be sure, Luie was strong, demanding, and colorful. But he will also be remembered for his resilience. “Most people are absolutely devastated when their pet idea proves wrong, but not Dad,” says his son Walter, who collaborated with Alvarez on the asteriod-impact hypothesis. “He felt that the pleasure derived from developing an idea and working through all of its ramifications lasted much longer than the disappointment of finding out it was wrong. Through my father, I’ve learned to enjoy finding out that what I thought was right wasn’t. I’ve learned to see challenges to my beliefs not as threats but as opportunities.” Bruce Felman is a Connecticut-based freelance writer.

Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez Dies at 77; Noted For Diverse Career And Controversial Theories

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