Letter from Luis W. Alvarez to his Son Walter Describing the Bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945
Luis Walter Alvarez was a San Francisco-born experimental physicist, inventor, and professor who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968. During World War II, Alvarez worked on the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago’s Met Lab and later at Los Alamos where he witnessed the Trinity test on July 16, 1945. On August 6, 1945, Alvarez was a scientific observer on a B-29 Superfortress that flew alongside the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. He wrote this letter to his young son describing the experience.
This letter comes from the Luis W. Alvarez Papers in the Department of Energy records at the National Archives at San Francisco. These papers offer a fascinating look into the subjects Alvarez dealt with throughout his career including his experiments in particle physics using the hydrogen bubble chamber, cyclotron, linear accelerator, Kaon-p interaction, magnetic monopole investigation of lunar surface materials, cosmic-ray structural analysis of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and a 1980 theory developed with his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, that an asteroid caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Letter from Luis W. Alvarez to his son Walter describing the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945. National Archives Identifier: 1746778.
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