Luis Alvarez

Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 - September 1, 1988) of San Francisco, California was a famed physicist who worked at the University of California, Berkeley.

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." 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]

With geologist son Walter, Luis proposed the asteroid-impact theory to explain the iridium anomaly of the K-T extinction boundary. An 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 Kennedy's head jerked backwards if Oswald, shooting from behind the preisdent, was the assassin. Known somewhat disparagingly as the "Jet-wash theory", critics point to the fact that two motorcyle policemen behind the president's car were splattered with blood and brain matter as evidence that the shot came from the front. However, on the Zapruder film they can be seen driving into the blood spray, which shot upwards and to the front.

External links

• Nobel biography
• About Luis Alvarez
• http://www.jfkresearch.com/morningstar/morningstar2.htm
• IEEE interview w/ Johnston, patentholder of the exploding-bridgewire detonator