Louis Slotin and the demon core: Winnipeg's Oppenheimer connection

The Hollywood blockbuster film Oppenheimer is exploding in theatres with sellouts and enthusiastic reviews, but a Winnipeg connection has remained behind the curtain.

The film chronicles the life of Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who headed the top secret Manhattan Project, which ushered in the Atomic Age.

Oppenheimer was director of the Los Alamos lab where the work was done, but it was Louis Slotin, from Scotia Street in Winnipeg's North End neighbourhood, whose fingers assembled the plutonium core of the first atom bomb, the Trinity Gadget.

"He passed away before I was born, so I never met him in person, but my family always told me about him and I viewed him as being very brave and someone who should have been a hero," said Israel Ludwig, whose mom was Slotin's sister.

Trinity was dropped at a New Mexico desert test site on July 16, 1945. Its success led to the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed a month later.

The exact number of deaths from the atomic bombings remains unknown but it is estimated 120,000 people died instantly while tens of thousands more died over the next several months from burns, radiation sickness, illness and malnutrition, with an estimated total of 129,000-226,000.

The Oppenheimer film includes a short black-and-white clip of Trinity being assembled, and in the centre is Slotin, "although his name isn't mentioned, there's no credits given," Ludwig said.

His deftness at bomb-making earned Slotin the nickname "chief armourer of the United States," said journalist Martin Zeilig, who wrote articles and made a documentary about Slotin.

"But you won't find Louis Slotin mentioned in many of the biographies of the Manhattan Project. He was working with all these giants of science," Zeilig said.

"When you're in that rarefied atmosphere, it might be difficult to get your name into the history books.

"That's one of the main reasons to tell this story and educate a new generation about the role of this scientist from Winnipeg. He was an amazing guy. I'm actually getting quite emotional thinking about it."

Born in the North End, the academically gifted Slotin entered the University of Manitoba at 16 and obtained his master of science degree by 22. He earned a PhD in physical chemistry in England in 1936, when he was 25.

He joined the University of Chicago and helped build the first cyclotron in the U.S. Midwest before being recruited to the Manhattan Project as the head of the team developing the plutonium core.

A year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Slotin's team had one core remaining. It was for a third atomic bomb, but Japan surrendered and ended the war.