Louis Slotin

thumb| Louis Alexander Slotin (1 December 1910 – 30 May 1946) was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Attributed He loves this experiment — "tickling the dragon's tail," he calls it — and he has already performed it at least 40 times. Even so, there is a certain tension in the room. Manipulating parts of an atomic bomb is no child's play. Stewart Alsop and Ralph E. Lapp, "The Strange Death of Louis Slotin", The Saturday Evening Post, vol. 226, no. 36 (Mar. 6, 1954), pp. 25ff: condensed in Reader's Digest. However, the phrase had already been quoted, unattributed, in Elton C. Fay, "Atomic Weapons Tests May Soon Come in Nevada Sands", The Gettysburg Times (Jan. 12, 1951), p. 4, col. 6: "Because of the code name of the project then was "dragon" and for the obvious legendary danger of a dragon, they dubbed the experiment "tickling the dragon's tail."" Some other, later sources attribute Richard Feynman: e.g. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and Harry Lustig, "Science as Theater: The Slip of the Scredriver", American Scientist, vol. 90, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 2002), pp. 550–555 · Bruce Weber, "Theater Review; A Scientist's Tragic Hubris Attains Critical Mass Onstage", The New York Times (Apr. 10, 2001), sec. e, p. 1 External links Category:1910 births Category:1946 deaths Category:Physicists from Canada Category:Chemists from Canada Category:Jews from Canada Category:King's College London alumni Category:University of Chicago faculty Category:Manhattan Project people