90 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
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#: 283 S0/EasyPlex
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06-Sep-88 14:09 MST
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Sb: APn 09/02 0331 Obit-Alvarez
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Fm: Executive News Svc. [72135,424]
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Copyright, 1988. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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The information contained in this news report may not be republished or
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redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- Nobel Prize-winner Luis W. Alvarez, a brilliant,
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wide-ranging physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and a controversial
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theory that asteroids or comets wiped out the dinosaurs, has died at age 77.
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Alvarez died at his home in this San Francisco Bay college town late
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Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, it was announced Thursday.
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Colleagues described Alvarez as a scientific Renaissance man whose colorful
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career took him from wartime radar systems to UFO sightings, secrets of an
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Egyptian pyramid and an analysis of the assassination of President Kennedy.
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"Luis Alvarez was a stunningly creative individual," David A. Shirley,
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director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, said Thursday. "His discoveries and
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inventions spanned an amazing range of the frontiers of man's knowledge over
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more than half a century."
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Alvarez, who worked at the laboratory and the University of California, died
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of complications from operations for esophageal cancer, laboratory spokeswoman
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Mary Barberia said, quoting the physicist's widow, Janet.
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His health had declined since surgery for a benign brain tumor last fall,
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the spokeswoman said.
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Alvarez won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1968 for developing the
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liquid-hydrogen bubble chamber and for discovering numerous atomic particles
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with the device. The chamber is filled with a transparent liquid so that
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charged particles and their collisions can be studied by photographing the
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bubbles and boiling that occur along their paths.
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In the late 1970s, Alvarez made headlines with the theory that asteroids or
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comets striking the Earth 65 million years ago killed the dinosaurs by kicking
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up huge, dense clouds of dust and smoke.
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Alvarez and colleagues who developed the hypothesis, including his geologist
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son Walter, argued that the clouds blocked sunlight, lowering temperatures,
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destroying food plants, and resulting in the extinction of dinosaurs and many
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other species.
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The theory, which challenged the long-held view that dinosaurs were unsuited
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for survival in the Darwinian evolutionary scheme, triggered a bitter
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scientific debate that continues to this day. Others argue that volcanic
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eruptions killed the dinosaurs by darkening the sun.
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Alvarez labeled one critic "a weak sister," and accused others of
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"publishing scientific nonsense."
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His theory got a boost last week when new evidence from a study of ancient
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clay was reported in the British journal Nature.
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The hypothesis has a chilling modern-day counterpart: a theory that that an
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atomic war would produce enough smoke to plunge Earth into a cold, dark
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"nuclear winter" that would wipe out any survivors.
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Alvarez, a San Francisco native, was the son of Walter C. Alvarez, a noted
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physician and medical columnist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
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He wrote in his 1987 autobiography, "Alvarez, Adventures of a Physicist"
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that he was indebted to his father, who told him it was a good idea to take a
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night off now and then to do nothing but think.
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As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Alvarez built one of the
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first Geiger counters in the United States. As a graduate student, he used it
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to study cosmic rays and proved radiation from space consists mostly of
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protons.
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He began working at Berkeley in 1936. His discoveries included the capture
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of electrons by atomic nuclei and the radioactivity of tritium, an isotope of
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hydrogen used in thermonuclear weapons.
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During World War II, Alvarez invented an effective bomb sight and a number
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of radar systems. His invention of a ground-controlled approach landing system
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saved the lives of many Allied pilots, some of whom thanked him after the war,
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according to California-Berkeley.
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Alvarez played an important role in developing the atomic bomb, and invented
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several types of atom smashers.
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In his autobiography, he nostalgically recalled the early days of atomic
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research, when he held a sphere of radioactive plutonium in his hands, "feeling
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its warmth."
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Alvarez made news by applying physics to popular subjects, including the
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X-ray scan of an Egyptian pyramid for hidden chambers -- there were none -- and
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analysis of evidence in the Kennedy assassination. His findings supported the
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Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
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University of California President David P. Gardner said Thursday that he
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and the entire university community were saddened by the death of Alvarez, whom
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he called "a creative and energetic scientist."
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Gardner said Alvarez showed "concern for the student, commitment to
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meaningful and distinctive research, and devotion to the betterment of society.
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`He will be missed."
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Alvarez is survived by his wife, Janet, two sons, two daughters, two sisters
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and a brother.
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Action
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