Luis Walter Alvarez

Luis Walter Alvarez earned his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1936 and joined Ernest Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, where he observed K-electron capture, produced tritium, and measured the neutron's magnetic moment with Felix Bloch. During World War II he moved to MIT's Radiation Laboratory, developing radar systems including Ground Controlled Approach—the technology that later proved critical to the Berlin airlift—and worked briefly for Enrico Fermi on reactors before joining the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, designing explosive lenses and detonators, then witnessing b…