Alvarez was born in San Francisco, California, on June 13, 1911. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's degree (1932), master's degree (1934) and doctorate (1936). Upon graduation, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. He became professor of physics there in 1945 and served in that capacity until 1978. Because of his wide-ranging interests, Alvarez was called the "prize wild-idea man " by colleagues at Berkeley. His earliest research was in the area of nuclear physics and cosmic rays. He was involved in research on the "east-west" effect in cosmic rays, the radioactivity of tritium (hydrogen-3) and other isotopes, the nature of nuclear fission, and the magnetic properties of the neutron. Alvarez received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1968 for his work on liquid-hydrogen bubble chambers. After Donald Glaser's invention of the bubble chamber in 1952, scientists attempted to construct larger, more efficient models of the detecting device...