Luis W. Alvarez was born on August 5, 1918, in Cuba. He attended the University of Havana, where he became interested in physics. He obtained his Ph.D
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in 1940 after studying at the University of Chicago with Professor Robert Oppenheimer. After three years as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II, Alvarez became director of the University of Puerto Rico's Nuclear Physics Laboratory. In 1948 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as a professor.
Alvarez was part of an important research team that discovered the process that splits atoms into smaller nuclei by bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons. This discovery led to an understanding of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion—the splitting and combining of atoms under controlled conditions. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1961 and received several other honors for his work on atomic energy.