Scientist.
Born in Winnipeg’s North End on 1 December 1910, son of Alexander Israel Slotin (1880-1947) and Sonia Niaslovsky (1885-?), he attended St. John’s Technical High School and the University of Manitoba, winning the gold medal in chemistry and physics and completing an MSc in 1933. He received his PhD in biochemistry from London University in 1936. He was also an amateur boxer.
Slotin became a research associate at the University of Chicago, working on an atom-smashing cyclotron. He began work in the Metallurgical Laboratory of the Manhatten Project in Chicago in 1942, and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico in December 1944. He became an expert at hand-assembling the core of atomic bombs, and it was an accident during the process of assembly that lead to his death. In order to save his colleagues, he terminated a connection in a bomb core, and as a result exposed himself to a fatal dose of radiation.
He died at Sante Fe, New Mexico on 30 May 1946 and was buried in the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery. A Winnipeg plaque and park is named in his honour.
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Slotin House (125 Scotia Street, Winnipeg)
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Dr. Louis Slotin Memorial Park and Plaque (Luxton Avenue, Winnipeg)
The Accident by Dexter Masters (1955).
“Dr. Louis Slotin and ‘The Invisible Killer’” by Martin Zeilig, The Beaver, Volume 75, Number 4 (August-September 1995), pages 20-26.
Birth registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
1911 Canada census, Automated Genealogy.
“Dr. Louis Slotin dies from radiation effects,” Winnipeg Free Press, 31 May 1946, page 1.
“A. I. Slotin, 64, prominent city cattleman, dies,” Winnipeg Tribune, 7 April 1947, page 11.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 4 February 2024
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