PHYSICIST

Luis Walter Alvarez

1911 - 1988

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Luis Walter Alvarez (June 13, 1911 – September 1, 1988) was an American experimental physicist, inventor, and professor of Spanish descent 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. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Luis Walter Alvarez is the 82nd most popular physicist (up from 328th in 2019), the 245th most popular biography from United States (up from 1,746th in 2019) and the 7th most popular American Physicist.

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Luis Walter Alvarez ranks 82 out of 851. Before him are Edward Teller, James Chadwick, Hermann von Helmholtz, Christian Doppler, Ernst Mach, and Manne Siegbahn. After him are Victor Francis Hess, Gustaf Dalén, Allan MacLeod Cormack, Johannes Stark, Gustav Ludwig Hertz, and Rudolf Clausius.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1911, Luis Walter Alvarez ranks 10. Before him are Konstantin Chernenko, Naguib Mahfouz, Georges Pompidou, Emil Cioran, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Władysław Szpilman. After him are Todor Zhivkov, Czesław Miłosz, Nino Rota, William Golding, Mikhail Botvinnik, and Võ Nguyên Giáp. Among people deceased in 1988, Luis Walter Alvarez ranks 5. Before him are Enzo Ferrari, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Georgy Malenkov, and Richard Feynman. After him are Nico, John Holmes, Bacha Khan, Ernst Ruska, Valery Legasov, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and Kurt Georg Kiesinger.

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Luis Walter Alvarez ranks 245 out of 20,380. Before him are James Madison (1751), Richard Chamberlain (1934), Sitting Bull (1831), Geronimo (1829), George Gershwin (1898), and Gregory Peck (1916). After him are Tim Cook (1960), Sharon Tate (1943), Lee Harvey Oswald (1939), Thomas Kuhn (1922), Cameron Diaz (1972), and Olympias (-375).

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Among PHYSICISTS In United States

Among physicists born in United States, Luis Walter Alvarez ranks 7. Before him are J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904), Charles H. Townes (1915), Philip Warren Anderson (1923), Richard Feynman (1918), Sheldon Lee Glashow (1932), and Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. (1915). After him are Robert Andrews Millikan (1868), Carl David Anderson (1905), Barry Barish (1936), Ben Roy Mottelson (1926), Percy Williams Bridgman (1882), and Donald A. Glaser (1926).

American born Physicists

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