Collisions

A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs

Alec Nevala-Lee

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English

Norton
01 July 2025

Biography; Biography: science, technology & engineering

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Nobel Prize–winning experimental physicist Luis W. Alvarez (1911–1988) began his storied career developing the atomic bomb and went on to conduct groundbreaking work on the building of the ancient Egyptian pyramids, the assassination of JFK, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. One of the preeminent scientists of the twentieth century, Alvarez was as obstinate as he was brilliant. He testified in 1954 against J. Robert Oppenheimer at the infamous security hearing that destroyed the latter's reputation, and fifteen years later, he attempted to support the lone gunman theory of the Kennedy assassination by shooting melons at a rifle range. In the first comprehensive biography of this pivotal figure, acclaimed biographer and novelist Alec Nevala-Lee captures Alvarez's achievements and ideas in vivid detail, focusing on the way collisions-in his combative personal life and his epochal work on accelerator physics, bubble chambers, the asteroid extinction hypothesis, and more-yielded his greatest insights.

By: Alec Nevala-Lee
Imprint: Norton
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 157mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 609g
ISBN: 9781324075103
ISBN 10: 1324075104
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alec Nevala-Lee is the author of Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller and the Hugo Award finalist Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in print and online in such publications as the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and the Daily Beast. He lives with his wife, the NPR host Wailin Wong, and their daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.

Reviews for Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs

""Collisions is a penetrating examination of how scientific discoveries derive not simply from complex theories but from hard work, ambition, narcissism, and luck. Anyone intrigued by the history of science and the atomic age will love this book."" -- Caroline Fraser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder