Luis Alvarez (1911–1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century. His investigations of three mysteries, all of them outside his normal areas of research, show what remarkable things a far-ranging imagination working with an immense store of knowledge can accomplish.
REFERENCES
1.
W. Peter
Trower
, ed., Discovering Alvarez: Selected Works of Luis W. Alvarez with Commentary by His Students and Colleagues
(University of Chicago Press
, Chicago, 1987
).2.
Richard P.
Feynman
, What do You Care What Other People Think?
(W. W. Norton
, New York, 1988
), p. 146
.3.
Three or four cathedrals may have had spires that rose above . They tended to fall down.
4.
Cheops’ queen was not buried in the pyramid. The names here are from the ninth century, when an Islamic ruler rediscovered the chambers by having tunnels dug into the pyramid. The chambers were empty, having evidently been broken into and looted far in the unrecorded past.
5.
Luis W.
Alvarez
, Jared A.
Anderson
, F.
El Bedwei
, James
Burkhard
, Ahmed
Fakhry
, Adib
Girgis
, Amr
Goneid
, Fikhry
Hassan
, Dennis
Iverson
, Gerald
Lynch
, Zenab
Miligy
, Ali Hilmy
Moussa
, Mohammed
-Sharkawi
, and Lauren
Yazolino
, “Search for hidden chambers in the pyramids
,” Science
167
, 832
–839
(1969
). Figures 1, 2, and 5–8 are adapted from this paper.6.
A statement of principle attributed to John Crow, in R.V. Jones,
The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945
(Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan
, New York, 1978
), pp. 76
–77
.7.
Gerald R.
Lynch
, “Locating chambers in an Egyptian pyramid using cosmic rays
,” Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Report LBL-2180 (1973
).8.
Luis W.
Alvarez
, “A physicist examines the Kennedy assassination film
,” Am. J. Phys.
44
, 813
–827
(1976
). Figure 9 is from this paper.9.
Josiah
Thompson
, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination
(Bernard Geis
, 1967
), p. 91
.10.
With permission of Don Olson, who took the movie.
11.
Luis W.
Alvarez
, Walter
Alvarez
, Frank
Asaro
, and Helen V.
Michel
, “Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction
,” Science
208
, 1095
–1108
(1980
).12.
See ⟨lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_cratering/Chicxulub/Animation.gif⟩ for an animation. See also
Julio
Gratton
and Carlos
Alberto Perazzo
, “Catastrophic bolide impacts on the Earth: Some estimates
,” Am. J. Phys.
74
, 789
–793
(2006
).13.
The idea of nuclear winter, much discussed in the 1980s as a previously overlooked aftereffect of a full-scale nuclear war, came from investigations of consequences of an asteroid impact.
14.
Luis W.
Alvarez
, “Mass extinctions caused by large bolide impacts
,” Lawrence Berkeley Lab Report LBL-22786 (1987
). Figures 13, 15, and 16 are taken from this report.15.
C. J.
Orth
, J. S.
Gilmore
, J. D.
Knight
, C. L.
Pillmore
, R. H.
Tschudy
, and J. E.
Fassett
, “An iridium abundance anomaly at the palynological Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in northern New Mexico
,” Science
214
, 1341
–1343
(1981
).16.
17.
James Lawrence
Powell
, Night Comes to the Cretaceous
(Harcourt, Brace, & Co.
, San Diego, 1998
).18.
© 2007 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2007
American Association of Physics Teachers
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