Winnipeg’s connection to Manhattan Project in spotlight

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This article was published 01/08/2023 (845 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From humble beginnings in Winnipeg’s North End, to a top-secret nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, a Winnipeg man’s contribution to the creation of the atomic bomb is being rediscovered with the release of Christopher Nolan’s new film Oppenheimer.

Louis Slotin was a member of the Manhattan Project, a United States government research project that produced the first atomic bomb and ushered humankind into the nuclear age.

“He was a very brilliant young man. Right from his young days growing up in Winnipeg,” said Israel Ludwig, whose mother was Slotin’s sister.

Slotin died before Ludwig was born, and although he did not get to meet his uncle, he grew up hearing stories about his life and legacy.

“My mother was very much concerned that his story be told,” he said. “It’s an honour to be related to him. Whenever I get the chance to talk about him, I like to.”

Slotin, who was born Dec. 1, 1910, was raised in the North End.

Academically gifted from a young age, he attended St. John’s Technical High School before being accepted to the University of Manitoba at the age of 16. He continued to study at London University in England, where he earned a PhD in biochemistry at the age of 25.

Slotin went on to the University of Chicago, where he worked alongside Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist responsible for creating the first nuclear reactor.

Both men were drafted to aid in the development of the atomic bomb.

Slotin landed in Los Alamos, N.M., in 1944 — headquarters of the Manhattan Project. He was tasked with assembling the inner core of the atomic bomb, known as the Trinity Gadget.

On July 16, 1945, Slotin detonated Trinity at a desert test site.

Roughly three weeks later, the first atomic bombs fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan — instantly killing an estimated 120,000, and tens of thousands more in the ensuing months.

Slotin was driven to help end the war by his contempt for antisemitism and the Nazi party.

“There’s no question my uncle saw that as the goal he was trying to achieve by working on the bomb,” Ludwig said.

Ludwig watched Oppenheimer in the theatre on Friday.

“It’s a good movie. It appears to be a very accurate representation of what went on during the Manhattan Project,” he said.

Although Slotin does not appear in the film, it does depict scientists working on the atomic core.

Slotin continued to work at Los Alamos until 1946. He desired to return to the University of Chicago and pursue research, and had hoped to find new methods to combat cancer using radiation, Ludwig said.

Before he left the military laboratory, he was asked to train his replacement on how to perform criticality tests.

The tests, also known as “ticking the dragon’s tail” involved separating two half-sphere shells of beryllium and a small plutonium core. Slotin would bring the two halves progressively closer, using a screwdriver to maintain a gap between them and stopping just short of creating a fission reaction.

On May 21, 1946, he was showing his colleagues how to perform the test when his hand slipped and the halves connected.

According to reports from the Los Alamos Historical Society, the room was instantly illuminated in a flash of blue light and heat.

Slotin threw himself on the sphere, breaking the two halves apart and halting the chain reaction before it could explode. He was exposed to a lethal does of radiation in a fraction of a second.

“He knowingly sacrificed his life in order to save the other people in the lab,” Ludwig said.

Slotin died nine days after the incident at the age of 35.

His parents were able to visit him in a Los Alamos hospital bed before his death.

“He was under strict, security regulations not to talk about it, so you can imagine the shock — particularly that my grandparents had — when the army had to contact them and say this accident had happened,” Ludwig said. “They had no idea what was going on, and it wasn’t until they got there that they found out the significance of the work he was doing.”

Slotin was returned to Winnipeg in a copper-lined coffin, meant to protect others from his irradiated remains.

He was buried at the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery in north Winnipeg.

A memorial park was erected in his honour in 1994. Known as the Dr. Louis Slotin Memorial Park, it sits at the foot of Luxton Avenue near the Red River. The space includes benches and a plaque.

tyler.searle@winnipegfreepress.mb.ca