Louis Slotin
(1910-1946)

(Photo source: Winnipeg Free Press, April 16, 1999, p. D1, in Louis Slotin Vertical File, Legislative Library of Manitoba).

Louis Slotin had an essential role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Its usage had devastating effects on two Japanese cities, but is credited with bringing about Japan's unconditional surrender to Allied forces and saving the lives of a large number of an estimated 1,000,000 American troops who otherwise would have had to invade Japan. Although he died tragically in a nuclear accident, Slotin is remembered for his bravery and selflessness in saving his colleagues.

Slotin was born in Winnipeg's North End, the eldest of three children of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended Machray Elementary School, then St. John's Technical High School, graduating near the top of his class, before going to the University of Manitoba, where he won the gold medal in chemistry and physics. Slotin, who was an amateur boxer, received his Master of Science degree in 1933. Three years later, Slotin, who was on a travelling fellowship, received his doctorate in biochemistry from King's College in London, England. For the next six months, he worked as a "special investigator" testing the Drumm alkaline battery for the Great Southern Railway in Dublin, Ireland.

After being rejected in 1937 for a position with Canada's National Research Council, Slotin became a research associate at the University of Chicago, working for almost no pay for two years on an atom-smashing cyclotron. During this time, he was financially supported by his father, the head of a Winnipeg livestock agency. Flourishing in the scientific research environment, Slotin contributed to a number of papers in radiobiology and his research and competence were noticed. After taking a leave of absence from the university, he was given a position in 1942 at Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhattan Project, which was attempting to build the first atomic bomb. He moved with the project to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then in December, 1944, to Los Alamos, New Mexico, becoming an expert at hand assembling the core of atomic bombs.

Slotin was responsible for building the triggering device on the first atomic bomb, code-named "Trinity", which was detonated in the New Mexico desert. On May 21, 1946, just months after the United States had dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, Slotin was exposed to a deadly dose of gama and neutron radiation while working on a plutonium bomb core. To protect the seven other men in the laboratory, whose lives he saved, he terminated a connection in the core, putting his body in front of it, knowing fully well that he would probably die as a result. Nine days later, Slotin died. His body was flown from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Winnipeg. Slotin's funeral was one of the largest in Winnipeg's history, with over 3,000 people attending the service on the front lawn of his parents' north Winnipeg Scotia Street home.

Slotin knew that through his atomic research he was assisting in creating a weapon of mass destruction, but reasoned that it was necessary to defeat the Axis powers and to preserve freedom and democracy from totalitarian threats. His work in radiology helped to establish radiation therapy as part of the arsenal of modern medicine. Slotin's story is recounted in Dexter Masters' 1955 novel The Accident, in a scene from the 1989 Hollywood movie Fat Man and Little Boy, and in a 1999 television documentary, "Tickling the Dragon's Tail". Slotin was commemorated by the City of Winnipeg in 1993, when a park on Luxton Avenue in north Winnipeg was named after him, and by the International Astronomical Union, which named Asteroid 12423 "Slotin" in 2002. He is buried in the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue Cemetery in Winnipeg.

Louis Slotin(1910-1946)

Louis Slotin
(1910-1946)