Analyzing the Evidence: Luis Alvarez and the Science of the Kennedy Assassination

Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs by acclaimed biographer Alec Nevala-Lee, is the story of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. Luis Alvarez and his decade-long scientific study of the Kennedy assassination. Alvarez worked to apply physics to the evidence collected during the investigation of the assassination, including the Abraham Zapruder film and the Dallas police audio recordings examined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Join Nevala-Lee for a conversation with Stephen Fagin, Head of Curatorial at The Sixth Floor Museum. This program offers an interesting look at the valuable and controversial role of science in understanding the events of November 22, 1963. Book signing will immediately follow the program. Does not include Museum admission. Museum members receive discounted ticket pricing. Contact [email protected] to learn more. PURCHASE TICKETS AbOUT THE author: He was a Hugo and Locus Award finalist for the group biography Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction (Dey Street / HarperCollins), which was named one of the best books of 2018 by The Economist. His biography Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, which was released by Dey Street / HarperCollins in 2022, was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an Economist best book of the year, and one of Esquire‘s fifty best biographies of all time. Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey From Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs (W. W. Norton), his biography of Luis W. Alvarez, was an Economist Best Book of 2025. His essays, reviews, and nonfiction have been featured in print and online in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, The Rumpus, Gizmodo, Fast Company, Public Books, Asterisk, The Skeptical Inquirer, and The Daily Beast. On the fiction side, his novels include the thrillers The Icon Thief, City of Exiles, and Eternal Empire, all published by Penguin Books. He also rediscovered Frozen Hell, the original version of John W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” (aka The Thing), which has been under development as a film by Blumhouse Productions. His short stories have frequently appeared in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact and have been reprinted in Lightspeed and two editions of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, as well as many other anthologies. Syndromes, an audio original collection of his short science fiction, is available from Recorded Books. He also edits a bimonthly puzzle feature, “Unknowns,” for Analog. His father immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong, and his mother is Finnish-American. He was born in 1980 in Castro Valley, California, and he graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Classics. His favorite books are The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, and The Whole Earth Catalog; his favorite movies are The Red Shoes, Blue Velvet, and Chungking Express. He lives with his wife, the NPR host Wailin Wong, and his daughter in Oak Park, Illinois. His next book will be Whiz Kids: The Mad Men of RAND and the Shaping of the Cold War, which is scheduled to be published by W. W. Norton in 2028.