Luis Walter Alvarez
American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor (1911–1988)
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Luis Walter Alvarez was an American experimental physicist and inventor who made significant contributions to physics research during the 20th century. His work matters because he advanced the field of physics through both his scientific discoveries and inventions, earning recognition as one of the notable scientists of his era.
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Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1911
- Works
- 1
Top works
- A study of the diffraction grating at grazing incidence
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Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
Article
Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1968 for his discovery of resonance states in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber. In 2007 the American Journal of Physics commented, "Luis Alvarez was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century."
After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936, Alvarez went to work for Ernest Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never before observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron.