Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs by Alec Nevala-Lee
'Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs' by Alec Nevala-Lee
Banking on his reputation from the Manhattan Project, Luis Alvarez decided to debunk the idea that multiple gunmen were at work the day JFK was assassinated. He conducted a series of tests with a rifle and melons (representing Kennedy’s head) and claimed, “Aha, it could have been a lone gunman!” Biographer Alec Nevala-Lee points out that Alvarez selectively reported his mixed melon results. It was not the best science.
As reported in Collisions, Alvarez spent much of his life in the lab, helping win World War II by working on radar and helping end it by designing the detonating device for the atom bomb. He witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima from an observation plane. Later, Alvarez testified against J. Robert Oppenheimer in the hearings that stripped the Manhattan Project’s director of his security clearance, even though Alvarez was himself under suspicion for being loose lipped on government secrets. Alvarez liked to brag, to play big shot.
He was accomplished nevertheless, winning the Nobel Prize for his work in physics. He pioneered the use of X-Rays to probe the interior of Egyptian pyramids and was an early proponent of the theory that an asteroid collided with the Earth, killing the dinosaurs and drastically changing the climate. Nevala-Lee’s carefully researched biography provides insight into the mindset of a major figure from America’s scientific ascent during the last century.
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