Prov-234 11/5/88 C759 CC822 wait roberts (Walt R.,759) 11/ 5/88 2:50 PM L:69 KE YS:/PROVOCATIONS NO. 234/ Memo to: The Climate Club — C759 5 November 198S From: Walt Roberts Provocation No. 234 Shootout at the K/T Boundary Luis Walter Alvarez, one of the nation's most distinguished scientists, died in September at age 77. Luis was a gadgeteer and engineer, as well as a brilliant scientist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1968 for work on sub-atomic particles of short lifetime that occur in high energy nuclear collisions. He worked at the Radiation Lab at MIT on radar and microwave radio beacons early in WWII. He developed the Instrument Landing System, ILS used for many years and still in full operation today, to radio direct airplanes to safe landings in bad weather at major airports throughout the world. From 1944 to 1945 Alvarez worked at Los Alamos on the atomic bomb project, and he first suggested the technique for detonating implosion- triggered atomic bombs like those exploded at Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He won over 40 patents. He spent most of his scientific life at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab of the University of California. He used cosmic rays to probe the Second Pyramid of Chephren in Egypt, and he helped investigate the shooting of John F. Kennedy. Luis and I were close friends by virtue of a strong association with Alfred L. Loomis, a wealthy business man with a strong bent for science, who played a big role in radar development during WWII at the MIT Radiation Lab, and who ran a private research center at Tuxedo in New York. Loomis sort of adooted both Luis and me, along with several other scientists, as something akin to foster sons. We would often visit Alfred at his home in Easthampton, Long Island, where Alfred liked to learn about our research in fullest detail over many long hours of conversation. He also would help us with advice, financial support, and contacts with foundations and individuals who could help us get the resources to do our science. Several times he visited our High Altitude Observatory sites in Boulder, Hawaii and Climax, and later he made visits to our new National Center for Atmospheric Research. During the design phase of our NCAR 1 aboratory I spent many hours going over the details of how to make the research center a flexible, functional and pleasant place to work, and how to do it in the most economical way. I often shared with Alvarez the visits to Loomis. Many years later, after Loomis' death, Luis wrote a marvelous and affectionate biography of Alfred. And quite recently Luis documented his own life, brilliantly, with delightful frankness, and not exactly modestly. He titled it "Alvarez, Adventures of a Physicist" and it's published by Basic Books. In Alvarez' 1ater years he devoted most of his creative energy to a novel and exciting theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, at the well known boundary of the Cretaceous/Tertiary periods, generally referred to as the K/T Boundary . He attributed the death of the dinosaurs and many other species to a many years long nuclear-winter— 1 ike darkness from the atmospheric dust of a gigantic asteroid impact on the earth. He worked Page 1 Prov-234 11/5/88 on this with son Walter, a paleontologist at Berkeley. Their notions became controversial, and Luis, never one to shun a good argument, fought for his theory with passion against those who advocated volcanic causes or other explanations. I won't review the arguments here, since I covered them in several previous "Provocations" (principally 44, 102, 158, 176, 180). The one thing that can be said for sure is that the Alvarez hypothesis stirred up the science of paleontology as nothing had done in a long time. Many accused Luis of bad manners and bad temper. I confess I found some of his criticisms of his opponents a bit testy. Whatever one says, the arguments revitalized some somnolent fields of research. Yale paleontologist Leo Hickey said it well a few months before Luis' death: "While I decry the nasty, bigoted, cantankerous, crusty old bastard Luis Alvarez, he really has helped open up the thinking in paleontology. His is a major contribution." The 3 October issue of "The Scientist" has two great articles, one simply about Luis, and the other about Luis and the "Shootout at the K/T Boundary." *****.