Collisions
A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An Economist Best Book of 2025
From the acclaimed biographer of Buckminster Fuller, a riveting biography of the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who became the greatest scientific detective of the twentieth century.
To his admirers, Luis W. Alvarez was the most accomplished, inventive, and versatile experimental physicist of his generation. During World War II, he achieved major breakthroughs in radar, played a key role in the Manhattan Project, and served as the lead scientific observer at the bombing of Hiroshima. In the decades that followed, he revolutionized particle physics with the hydrogen bubble chamber, developed an innovative X-ray method to search for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Chephren, and shot melons at a rifle range to test his controversial theory about the Kennedy assassination. At the very end of his life, he collaborated with his son to demonstrate that an asteroid impact was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, igniting a furious debate that raged for years after his death.
Alvarez was also a combative and relentlessly ambitious figure—widely feared by his students and associates—who testified as a government witness at the security hearing that destroyed the public career of his friend and colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer. In the first comprehensive biography of Alvarez, Alec Nevala-Lee vividly recounts one of the most compelling untold stories in modern science, a narrative overflowing with ideas, lessons, and anecdotes that will fascinate anyone with an interest in how genius and creativity collide with the problems of an increasingly challenging world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this illuminating account, biographer Nevala-Lee (Inventor of the Future) traces the wide-ranging career of physicist Luis Walter Alvarez, who died in 1988 at age 77. After getting his PhD at the University of Chicago in the 1930s, Alvarez took a job with the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley, where he met J. Robert Oppenheimer. Upon America's entry into WWII, Oppenheimer invited Alvarez to participate in the Manhattan Project, where he helped devise detonators for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, but the pair's relationship chilled after Oppenheimer came out against Alvarez's goal of creating a hydrogen bomb. After the war, Alvarez returned to Berkeley and watched with jealousy as his colleagues collected Nobel Prizes, motivating him to develop a "bubble chamber" machine that recorded the movements of subatomic particles. The invention led to the discovery of numerous new particles and nabbed him the Nobel Prize in 1968. Nevala-Lee provides approachable breakdowns of Alvarez's pioneering physics and a stimulating overview of his more eclectic latter-day pursuits, including using his background on particle collisions to debunk the theory of a second JFK shooter and to popularize the idea that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. It's a solid overview of an accomplished life. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Great biography of a brilliant scientist
Good descriptions of both his science and his life with enough explanatory detail to make the story comprehensible — presents a balanced view of a challenging time