On a happier science-related note, the AIP’s Physics News Update highlights a very nice article in The American Journal of Physics about the wide-ranging scientific investigations of Luis Alvarez:
Scientist as detective: Luis Alvarez and the pyramid burial chambers, the JFK assassination, and the end of the dinosaurs
Luis Alvarez (1911-1988) was one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century. His investigations of three mysteries, all of them outside his normal areas of research, show what remarkable things a far-ranging imagination working with an immense store of knowledge can accomplish.
It’s a nice summary of his accomplishments. Not mentioned in the article is the (less famous, but more personally significant) fact that he was really nice to a naive elementary school student, back in the day…