Everything about Louis Slotin totally explained
Louis Alexander Slotin (
December 1,
1910 –
May 30,
1946) was a
Canadian physicist and
chemist who took part in the
Manhattan Project. He was born and raised in the
North End of
Winnipeg,
Manitoba. After earning both his
Bachelor of Science and
Master of Science degrees from the
University of Manitoba, Slotin attended
King's College London, where he obtained his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the
University of Chicago as a research associate to help design a
cyclotron. In 1942, he was invited to participate in the Manhattan Project.
As part of the Manhattan Project, Slotin performed experiments with
uranium and
plutonium cores to determine their
critical mass values. After World War II, Slotin continued his research at
Los Alamos National Laboratory. On
May 21,
1946, Slotin accidentally began a fission reaction, which released a burst of
hard radiation. He was rushed to hospital, and died nine days later on
May 30, the second victim of a
criticality accident in history.
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 this was a preventable accident. The accident and its aftermath have been dramatized in fiction.
Early life
Slotin was the first of three children born to Israel and Sonia Slotin,
Yiddish-speaking refugees who had fled the
pogroms of
Russia to
Winnipeg,
Manitoba. He 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 Technical High School, Slotin was academically exceptional. His younger brother, Sam, later remarked that his brother "had an extreme intensity that enabled him to study long hours."
King's College
While at King's College, Slotin distinguished himself as an
amateur boxer by winning the college's amateur bantamweight boxing championship. Later, he gave the impression that he'd fought for the
Spanish Republic and flown experimental fighter jets with the
Royal Air Force. Author
Robert Jungk recounts in his book
Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, the first published account of the
Manhattan Project, that Slotin "had volunteered for service in the Spanish Civil War, more for the sake of the thrill of it than on political grounds." During an interview years later, Sam stated that his brother had gone "on a walking tour in Spain", and he "did not take part in the war" as previously thought. The job paid poorly and Slotin's father had to support him for two years. From 1939 to 1940, Slotin collaborated with
Earl Evans, the head of the university's biochemistry department, to produce radiocarbon (
carbon-14 and
carbon-11) from the cyclotron.
Slotin may have been present at the start-up of
Enrico Fermi's "
Chicago Pile-1", the first
nuclear reactor, on
December 2,
1942; however, the accounts of the event don't agree on this point. During this time, Slotin also contributed to a number of papers in the field of
radiobiology. His expertise on the subject garnered the attention of the United States government, and as a result he was invited to join the
Manhattan Project, the United States' effort to develop a nuclear bomb. Scientists referred to this flirting with the possibility of a
nuclear chain reaction as "tickling the dragon's tail", after a remark by physicist
Richard Feynman who compared the experiments to "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon". On
July 16,
1945, Slotin assembled the core for
Trinity, the first detonated atomic bomb. He became known as the "chief armourer of the United States" for his expertise in assembling nuclear weapons.
After the war, Slotin expressed growing disdain for his personal involvement in the project. He remarked, "I have become involved in the Navy tests, much to my disgust." The 24-year old Daghlian was irradiated with 510
rems (5.1
Sv) of
neutron radiation. As the young man spent the next 21 days in the hospital, slowly succumbing to
radiation sickness, Slotin spent many hours with him.
The criticality accident
On
May 21,
1946, Slotin and seven other colleagues performed an experiment that involved the creation of one of the first steps of a fission reaction by placing two half-spheres of
beryllium (a neutron reflector) around a plutonium core. The experiment used the same plutonium core that had irradiated Daghlian. Slotin grasped the upper beryllium hemisphere with his left hand through a thumb hole at the top while he maintained the separation of the half-spheres using the blade of a screwdriver with his right hand, having removed the
shims normally used. in the presence of his parents. He was buried in Winnipeg on
June 2,
1946.
Legacy
On
June 14,
1946, the associate editor of the
Los Alamos Times, Thomas P. Ashlock, penned a poem entitled "Slotin - A Tribute":
May God receive you, great-souled scientist!
While you were with us, even strangers knew
The breadth and lofty stature of your mind
Twas only in the crucible of death
We saw at last your noble heart revealed. The accident and its aftermath were dramatized in the 1989 motion picture Fat Man and Little Boy, which starred John Cusack as Michael Merriman, a fictional character based on Slotin. Author Paul Mullin wrote the play Louis Slotin Sonata, a dramatic recreation of the events that unfolded on May 21, 1946.
Further Information
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