Walter Alvarez

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Walter Alvarez 2010

Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940 in Berkeley , California ) is an American geologist and geology professor in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley . With the theory developed together with his father Luis Walter Alvarez about an asteroid impact , which among other things led to the extinction of dinosaurs , Alvarez became world famous.

Family and education

Alvarez was born into a family of scientists and artists. He is the son of the Nobel Prize- winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez. His grandfather was the well-known physician Walter C. Alvarez and his great-grandfather Luis F. Alvarez worked as a doctor in Hawaii , where he developed an improved diagnostic method for the early form of leprosy . His great-aunt Mabel Alvarez was a well-known Californian painter.

Alvarez received his Bachelor of Arts in geology from Carleton College , Minnesota in 1962 and a Ph. D. in geology from Princeton University in 1967 .

Career as a scientist

In the first years of his career he worked for the oil company American Overseas Petroleum Limited in the Netherlands and during the time of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi's revolution in Libya . During this time he developed an interest in geoarchaeology , left the oil company and spent some time in Italy studying the volcanoes around Rome and their influence on the distribution of settlements in Ancient Rome .

After his stay in Italy, Alvarez took a position at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at Columbia University to study the tectonics of the Mediterranean Sea in the light of the new theory of plate tectonics . His work on paleomagnetic data in Italy led to a study of the magnetic polarity in Italian deep-sea limestones , and he and his colleagues were able to determine the magnetic polarity for rocks dating back more than 100 million years. Alvarez is still active in this field today.

In the late 1970s he investigated earthquake forecasting methods in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as part of a scientific agreement between the USSR and the USA . Since the mid-1990s he studied the stratigraphy of Utah .

Gubbio's Iridium Anomaly

Alvarez became known through the successful discovery, together with his father Luis and the nuclear chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, of a clay layer strongly enriched with iridium at the Cretaceous - Tertiary border (KT border) in Gubbio in the Umbria region of Italy. Since this element is common in asteroids but rare on Earth, they concluded that this enrichment was due to the impact of a large asteroid. In addition, the consequences of this impact could have led to mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary around 65 million years ago, when 85% of all animal species became extinct, including dinosaurs. Alvarez describes the discovery of the iridium-rich layer and the development of the theory in his book, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom ( T. Rex and the Crater of corruption ).

In the following years, iridium anomalies were discovered in many other places on earth and were ultimately associated with the Chicxulub crater . The theory is still hotly debated among scientists today, but has caught on with many. Alvarez is still doing research on mass extinction and the Chicxulub crater today.

Honors

Alvarez has published more than 130 articles and scientific papers over the course of his career and has received many awards and prizes, including the Dickson Prize in Science in 1997 , the Penrose Medal in 2002 , the highest distinction of the Geological Society of America , an honorary doctorate in geosciences University of Siena , Italy, as well as the Nevada Medal in 2006, with prize money of US $ 20,000. He was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 .

Scientific works (selection)

  • 1970: Geology and history of Sicily. Petroleum Exploration Society of Libya, 291 S., Tripoli (as editor with Klaus HA Gohrbandt )
  • 1973: The application of plate tectonics to the Mediterranean region. In: DH Tarling and SK Runcorn (eds.): Implications of continental drift to the earth sciences. Academic Press, Vol. 2, pp. 893-908, London
  • 1979: Anomalous iridium levels at the Cretaceous / Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy: Negative results of tests for a supernova origin. In: WK Christensen and T. Birkelund (eds.): Cretaceous / Tertiary Boundary Events Symposium, University of Copenhagen. Vol. 2, p. 69 (with LW Alvarez, F. Asaro and HV Michel)
  • 1981: One hundred million years of geomagnetic polarity history. Geology, Vol. 9, pp. 392-397 (with W. Lowrie)
  • 1986: Toward a theory of impact crises. EOS, Vol. 67, No. 35, pp. 649-658
  • 1995: Emplacement of Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary shocked quartz from Chicxulub Crater. Science, Vol. 269, pp. 930-935 (with Ph. Claeys and SW Kieffer)
  • 2003: Comparing the evidence relevant to impact and flood basalt at times of major mass extinctions. Astrobiology, Vol. 3, pp. 153-161

Popular scientific works (selection)

  • 1990: What caused the mass extinction? An extraterrestrial impact. Scientific American, Vol. 263, pp. 78-84 (with F. Asaro)
  • 1992: The search for the KT crater. Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future, pp. 88-101
  • 1998: T. Rex and the Crater of Doom. ISBN 0-375-70210-5
  • 2008: The Mountains of Saint Francis: The Geologic Events that Shaped Our Earth WW Norton

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alvarez, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Berkeley , California