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| spouse = | religion = | signature = Luis Alvarez signature.jpg }} 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. 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 in Berkeley. Alvarez devised a set of experiments to observe K-electron capture in radioactive nuclei, predicted by the beta decay theory but never observed. He produced tritium using the cyclotron and measured its lifetime. In collaboration with Felix Bloch, he measured the magnetic moment of the neutron. In 1940 Alvarez joined the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where he contributed to a number of World War II radar projects, from early improvements to Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) radar beacons, now called transponders, to a system known as VIXEN for preventing enemy submarines from realizing that they had been found by the new airborne microwave radars. The radar system for which Alvarez is best known and which has played a major role in aviation, most particularly in the post war Berlin airlift, was Ground Controlled Approach (GCA). Alvarez spent a few months at the University of Chicago working on nuclear reactors for Enrico Fermi before coming to Los Alamos to work for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan project. Alvarez worked on the design of explosive lenses, and the development of exploding-bridgewire detonators. As a member of Project Alberta, he observed the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29 Superfortress, and later the bombing of Hiroshima from the B-29 ''The Great Artiste''. After the war Alvarez was involved in the design of a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber that allowed his team to take millions of photographs of particle interactions, develop complex computer systems to measure and analyze these interactions, and discover entire families of new particles and resonance states. This work resulted in his being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968. He was involved in a project to x-ray the Egyptian pyramids to search for unknown chambers. With his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, he developed the Alvarez hypothesis which proposes that the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs was the result of an asteroid impact. Alvarez was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group, the Bohemian Club, and the Republican Party. == Early life == Luis Walter Alvarez was born in San Francisco on June 13, 1911, the second child and oldest son of Walter C. Alvarez, a physician, and his wife Harriet née Smyth, and a grandson of Luis F. Alvarez, a physician who lived for a time in Spain, then Cuba, and finally the United States, who found a better method for diagnosing macular leprosy. He had an older sister, Gladys, a younger brother, Bob, and a younger sister, Bernice. His aunt, Mabel Alvarez, was a California artist specializing in oil painting. He attended Madison School in San Francisco from 1918 to 1924, and then San Francisco Polytechnic High School. In 1926, his father became a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, and the family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where Alvarez attended Rochester High School. He had always expected to attend the University of California, but at the urging of his teachers at Rochester, he instead went to the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1932, his master's degree in 1934, and his PhD in 1936.〔 As an undergraduate, he belonged to the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. As a postgraduate he moved to Gamma Alpha. In 1932, as a graduate student at Chicago, he discovered physics there and had the rare opportunity to use the equipment of legendary physicist Albert A. Michelson.〔Alfred B. Bortz. ''(Physics: Decade by Decade )''. Facts On File, Incorporated; 2007. ISBN 978-0-8160-5532-6. p. 168.〕 Alvarez also constructed an apparatus of Geiger counter tubes arranged as a cosmic ray telescope, and under the aegis of his faculty advisor Arthur Compton, conducted an experiment in Mexico City to measure the so-called East–West effect of cosmic rays. Observing more incoming radiation from the west, Alvarez concluded that primary cosmic rays were positively charged. Compton submitted the resulting paper to the ''Physical Review'', with Alvarez's name at the top. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Luis Walter Alvarez」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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