Q&A with Alec Nevala-Lee

 

 

 

Alec Nevala-Lee is the author of a new biography of physicist Luis W. Alvarez, Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs. Nevala-Lee's other books include Inventor of the Future. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

 

Q: What inspired you to write a biography of physicist Luis W. Alvarez (1911-1988)?

A: I’ve written two previous books about figures who were adjacent to science—but not directly involved with it—in the period from the thirties through the Cold War.

 

My first nonfiction book, Astounding, was a biography of four science fiction writers, including the editor John W. Campbell; the second one, Inventor of the Future, was about the architectural designer and futurologist Buckminster Fuller.

 

Both Campbell and Fuller desperately wished that they had been involved in the Manhattan Project, and they even embellished the facts to make it sound like they had more of an impact than they did.

 

I plan to continue exploring these kinds of stories in my work, but in the meantime, it occurred to me that I should write about a scientist who really achieved all the things that Campbell and Fuller had simply imagined.

 

Luis W. Alvarez turned out to be the ideal protagonist for this sort of book, partly because no one had ever written his biography, but also because he was a hands-on experimentalist whose accomplishments I could understand.

 

Best of all, his career took him to so many fascinating places—from Hiroshima to the Kennedy assassination to the extinction of the dinosaurs—that I knew that I would learn more while writing it than with any other book I could imagine.

Q: The author Caroline Fraser said of the book, “Collisions is a penetrating examination of how scientific discoveries derive not simply from complex theories but from hard work, ambition, narcissism, and luck.” What do you think of that description?

A: It’s very accurate! Alvarez was undeniably a genius, but he was also driven, a relentless taskmaster, and born at the right place and time. I’m fascinated by all the ways that science is produced by communities, personalities, and historical circumstances, along with sudden moments of insight, and Alvarez is the perfect subject for exploring these issues.

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Alvarez and J. Robert Oppenheimer?

A: Alvarez and Oppenheimer were longtime colleagues and friends at UC Berkeley, and they had enormous mutual respect for each other. (Ernest Lawrence, Alvarez’s mentor, didn’t have any hesitation about ranking them as equals.)

 

Oppenheimer personally recruited Alvarez to play a key role in the Manhattan Project, purely because he was one of the most qualified—and valuable—physicists in the country.

 

After the war, they fell out over the development of the thermonuclear bomb, which Alvarez supported and Oppenheimer opposed. Eventually, Alvarez became one of the few scientists to testify against Oppenheimer at his notorious security hearing in 1954, which created a breach between them that never really healed.

 

My sense is that Alvarez valued the thermonuclear bomb program over his friendship with Oppenheimer, whom he decided to neutralize for the sake of national security. It’s one of the darkest moments of his career, and Alvarez refused to talk about it when he was writing his own autobiography.

Q: How did you research Alvarez’s life, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

A: Fortunately, there wasn’t any lack of material. Along with the huge uncut draft of Alvarez’s memoir, I was able to explore his papers at Berkeley, and there were plenty of resources on the Manhattan Project and other key episodes. (I also spoke to many of his former colleagues and students, along with his four children.)

 

The biggest surprise came very early in the process, when I discovered that Alvarez—who depicts himself in his autobiography as a likable, fairly easy-going guy—was actually known within the physics world as an incredibly difficult man.

 

One of his proteges, Richard Muller, later told me that Alvarez was “probably the most hated physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.” So I had to quickly revise my understanding of his personality from what I thought it was when I conceived of this book.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: My next book is tentatively titled Whiz Kids: The Oracles of RAND and the World They Made. It’s a history of the civilian analysts from the RAND Corporation think tank recruited by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to overhaul the Pentagon in the ‘60s, and how their ideas affected the nuclear arms race, Vietnam, and the Cold War.

 

There’s a lot here that connects to my earlier work, especially on the history of futurology, and I’m hoping to finish it in time for publication by W. W. Norton sometime in 2028.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: My other ongoing project is serving as the puzzle editor of the magazine Analog Science Fiction & Fact. If any readers out there enjoy constructing word or logic puzzles—and getting paid a very modest amount for their work—they should reach out!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Alec Nevala-Lee.