Related Profiles Leroy M Hartmann. Henry F. Reginald C. Captain, Alsos Mission. Esther Turovlin. Secretary, Chicago, IL. Shirley Lewallen. He and Compton determined that the cosmic rays were mostly positively charged, and therefore presumably protons. After receiving his Ph. Lawrence at the University of California, in part through family connections.
Alvarez's father, a physician on the staff of the Mayo Clinic, had helped Lawrence get money for one of his cyclotrons, and his sister was Lawrence's part-time secretary. Arriving at the Old Radiation Laboratory, Alvarez made the first of his dramatic career changes as he prepared himself to become a practicing nuclear physicist.
First, he became thoroughly familiar with all instruments in the laboratory, their use, and the physics that was being done with them. He did this by helping everyone with their experiments while becoming a skilled machine operator and repairman. Emerging from the laboratory at each day's end, Alvarez would pick up a couple of volumes of physics journals from the university library; he eventually read every published nuclear physics article held there.
Years later he would astonish his colleagues by reproducing a curve or a little known fact gleaned in these early efforts. He could usually cite the authors, journal, year, and often the location of the volume in the library and whether the item was on a right-or a left-hand page.
By Hans Bethe had published his three-part compendium of all that was known about nuclear physics. Alvarez chose first to make a measurement that Bethe said couldn't be done and then to disprove one of Bethe's assertions. In just four years Alvarez discovered the radioactivity of tritium and the stability of helium-3, the magnetic moment of the neutron, and that nuclei cannibalize their own atomic electrons.
He also demonstrated the spin dependence of the nuclear force, established a new standard of length using mercury, and made the first experimental demonstrations in a field now called heavy-ion physics. World War II ended Alvarez's nuclear physics career. He soon found himself in Boston, figuring how to apply high-frequency radio waves to achieve military goals.
Using optics ideas learned in his thesis work, Luie invented the linear phased array, which formed the basis of EAGLE, the first radar bombing system. He also invented VIXEN, a system to outfox German submarines by diminishing an airborne acquisition radar's power as a surfaced sub was approached, so that the listening skipper would believe the attack plane was going away. Upon his return to the Berkeley laboratory after the war, Alvarez made another career change, to that of a particle accelerator physicist.
He realized the importance of team research and looked to the methods of Lawrence and Ernest Rutherford.
Like them, he displayed an ability to select good people to work with him. His first postwar machine was the proton linear accelerator, which has become the standard injector for many subsequent higher energy circular machines and is still referred to as an "Alvarez accelerator.
Alvarez was a superb teacher. Alvarez has devoted most of this time to the study of cosmic rays, using balloons and superconducting magnets.
In he was awarded the John Scott Medaland Prize, by the city of Philadelphia, for the same work. In he was awarded the Medal for Merit. In he was awarded the Einstein Medal for his contribution to the physical sciences. He has received the following honorary de grees: Sc. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.
To cite this document, always state the source as shown above. For more updated biographical information, see: Alvarez, Luis W. Basic Books, New York, Luis Alvarez died on September 1, Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page.
Nobel Prizes Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in , for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
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