Walter Alvarez

Walter Alvarez is an American geologist, born in 1940, a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, best known for the Alvarez hypothesis, developed with his father Luis Alvarez, Frank Asaro and Helen Michel, that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, based on their discovery of iridium enrichment in a clay layer marking the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary sixty six million years ago. His broader research has spanned Mediterranean tectonics and geomagnetic reversals, and more recently he has worked on Big History, an interdisciplinary approach linking cosmic, geological and human history. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1991, and received the Vetlesen Prize in 2008 and the Barringer Medal in 2013; minor planet 3581 Alvarez is named for him and his father. He received the Penrose Medal in 2002. He is also live on this family own earth atlas under the same name, a legitimate width mint of the same historically significant scientist rather than a duplication.