Walter Clement Alvarez (July 22, 1884June 18, 1978) was an American medical doctor of

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

descent. He authored several dozen books on medicine, and wrote introductions and forewords for many others.

Biography

He was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and spent his childhood in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, where his father was a government physician. In 1910, having received his medical education in

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, he began his practice. From 1913 to the end of 1925, Alvarez practiced internal medicine in San Francisco and conducted research at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

. He lived at 3837 Clay Street raising his family. In 1934 he became Professor of Medicine at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

(Mayo Foundation) and later served as Consultant in Medicine Emeritus. His father was

Luis F. Alvarez Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

, who worked as a physician in California and Hawaii and developed a method for the better diagnosis of macular leprosy. His sister was California artist and oil painter

Mabel Alvarez Mabel Alvarez (November 28, 1891 – March 13, 1985) was an American painter. Her works, often introspective and spiritual in nature, and her style is considered a contributing factor to the Southern California Modernism and California Impressi ...

. Alvarez was married to the former Harriet Skidmore Smythe and the couple had four children: Gladys,

Luis Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

, Robert and Bernice. Luis later became a

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

-winning physicist. His grandson is

Walter Alvarez Walter Alvarez (born October 3, 1940) is a professor in the Earth and Planetary Science department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most widely known for the theory that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid impact, developed in ...

, a Professor of Geology at the

. Beginning after his retirement in 1951, Alvarez began writing a medical column which soon became syndicated throughout North America in hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers. The ''Walter C. Alvarez Memorial Award'' is named in his honor and is presented to a member or nonmember of the

American Medical Writers Association The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) is a professional association for medical communicators, with more than 4,000 members in the United States, Canada, and 30 other countries. AMWA is governed by a board of directors composed of the ele ...

to honor excellence in communicating health care developments and concepts to the public. He is most notable for his enlightened approach to homosexuality and his efforts to educate the medical profession and the broader public about the topic. He is regarded as an ally of the homophile movement in the 1950s-1970s. ''

Alvarez' syndrome Alvarez' syndrome is a medical disorder in which the abdomen becomes bloated without any obvious reason, such as intestinal gas Flatulence, in humans, is the expulsion of gas from the intestines via the anus, commonly referred to as farting. ...

'', a syndrome of hysterical or neurotic abdominal

bloating Abdominal bloating (or simply bloating) is a short-term disease that affects the gastrointestinal tract. Bloating is generally characterized by an excess buildup of gas, air or fluids in the stomach. A person may have feelings of tightness, press ...

without any excess of gas in the digestive tract, and ''Alvarez-waves'', painless uterine contractions occurring during the length of pregnancy, are named after him. Alvarez was the first to investigate electric activity of a stomach and, thereby, became the founder of a new diagnostic gastroenterology branch — electrogastrography. He died in California in 1978. His personal papers are held by Lane's Archives and Special Collections.

Publications

References

External links

Early Photograph of Walter C. Alvarez
March 26, 2005 genealogy.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Alvarez, Walter C. 1884 births 1978 deaths 20th-century American physicians American expatriates in the Hawaiian Kingdom American gastroenterologists American people of Spanish descent Diet food advocates University of California, Berkeley staff University of Minnesota faculty Writers from San Francisco Hispanic and Latino American scientists Hispanic and Latino American physicians