Alvarez & aviation

Current reading: Adventures of a Physicist by Luis Alvarez.

Already at the end of the first chapter there is an unexpected aviation connection:

For Christmas that year [1933] my grandfather gave me his customary fifty-dollar check. Since I had lost my chance to parachute from a Navy plane, I decided to spend the fifty dollars on flying lessons. I drove out to Midway Airport and found a willing instructor at fifteen dollars an hour, a fee that included the use of large, open-cockpit Curtiss Fledgling biplane, a direct descendant of the famous Curtiss Jenny of the First World War. I asked my instructor whether I would be able to solo on my fifty dollars. He said I should if I had any aptitude. I soloed with just three hours of dual instruction and made three solo landings before I used up my Christmas check. This early flying experience began my lifelong love affair with aviation. When I closed my log books at the age of seventy-three, they showed more than one thousand hours of flying time, most of it as pilot in command. I think of myself as having had two separate careers, one in science and one in aviation. I've found the two almost equally rewarding.