34 Facts About Louis Slotin

Louis Alexander Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project.

In 1942, Louis Slotin was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project, and subsequently performed experiments with uranium and plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values.

Louis Slotin was hailed as a hero by the United States government for reacting quickly enough to prevent the deaths of his colleagues.

However, some physicists argue that Louis Slotin's behavior preceding the accident was reckless and that his death was preventable.

Louis Slotin was the first of three children born to Israel and Sonia Slotin, Yiddish-speaking Jewish refugees who had fled the pogroms of Russia to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Louis Slotin grew up in the North End neighborhood of Winnipeg, an area with a large concentration of Eastern European immigrants.

From his early days at Machray Elementary School through his teenage years at St John's High School, Louis Slotin was academically exceptional.

At age 16, Louis Slotin entered the University of Manitoba to pursue a degree in science.

Louis Slotin had often been in extreme danger as an anti-aircraft gunner.

The job paid poorly and Louis Slotin's father had to support him for two years.

From 1939 to 1940, Louis Slotin collaborated with Earl Evans, the head of the university's biochemistry department, to produce radiocarbon from the cyclotron.

Louis Slotin might have been present at the start-up of Enrico Fermi's "Chicago Pile-1", the first nuclear reactor, on 2 December 1942; the accounts of the event do not agree on this point.

Louis Slotin worked on the production of plutonium under future Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner at the university and later at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Louis Slotin moved to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in December 1944 to work in the bomb physics group of Robert Bacher.

At Los Alamos, Louis Slotin's duties consisted of dangerous criticality testing, first with uranium in Otto Robert Frisch's experiments, and later with plutonium cores.

On 16 July 1945, Louis Slotin assembled the core for Trinity, the first detonated atomic device, and became known as the "chief armorer of the United States" for his expertise in assembling nuclear weapons.

Louis Slotin received two small circular lead and silver commemorative pins for his work on the project.

Louis Slotin did not wear his dosimetry badge, but his dose was estimated to be at least 100 roentgen.

Louis Slotin quickly collapsed with acute radiation poisoning and died 25 days later in the Los Alamos base hospital.

Louis Slotin began training a replacement, Alvin C Graves, to take over his role at Los Alamos.

On 21 May 1946, with seven colleagues watching, Louis Slotin performed an experiment that involved the creation of one of the first steps of a fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of beryllium around a 3.5-inch-diameter plutonium core.

Louis Slotin experienced a sour taste in his mouth and an intense burning sensation in his left hand.

Louis Slotin jerked his left hand upward, lifting the upper beryllium hemisphere, and dropped it to the floor, ending the reaction.

Louis Slotin had already been exposed to a lethal dose of neutron radiation.

Louis Slotin's colleagues rushed him to the hospital, but the radiation damage was irreversible.

Louis Slotin called his parents and they were flown at Army expense from Winnipeg to be with him.

Louis Slotin ultimately experienced "a total disintegration of bodily functions" and slipped into a coma.

Louis Slotin was buried in the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery in Winnipeg on 2 June 1946.

Graves, who was standing the closest to Louis Slotin, developed acute radiation sickness and was hospitalized for several weeks.

Louis Slotin survived, although he lived with chronic neurological and vision problems.

Louis Slotin stated this opinion in a publicly available report that included personal medical information which he had previously declined to release to Cieslicki during the final stages of his illness.

Louis Slotin's experiment was said to be the last conducted before the core's detonation and was intended to be the final demonstration of its ability to go critical.

Recent documents have made various interpretations of Louis Slotin's dose, ranging from 287 rads to 21 sieverts.

Louis Slotin's accident is echoed in the 1947 film The Beginning or the End, in which a scientist assembling the bomb destined for Hiroshima dies after coming into contact with radioactive material.