On May 12, 1946, Louis Alexander Slotin was carrying out an experiment in the laboratories at Los Alamos with seven other men. Slotin was good with his hands; he liked using his head; he was bright and a little daring – in short, he was like any other man anywhere who is happy in his work.
At Los Alamos, Slotin, then aged thirty-five, was concerned with the assembly of pieces of plutonium, each of which alone is too small to be dangerous and which will only sustain a chain reaction when they are put together. Atomic bombs are, in fact, detonated in this way, by suddenly bringing together several harmless pieces of plutonium so that they form a larger, explosive mass. Slotin himself has tested the assembly of the first experimental bomb which had been exploded in New Mexico in July 1945.
Now, nearly a year later, Slotin was again doing an experiment of this kind. He was nudging toward one another, by tiny movements, several pieces of plutonium, in order to ensure that their total mass would be large enough to make a chain reaction; and he was doing it, as experts are tempted to do such things, with a screwdriver. The screwdriver slipped, the pieces of plutonium came a fraction too close together and suddenly the instruments which everyone was watching registered a great upsurge of neutrons which is the sign that a chain reaction has begun. The assembly was filling the room with radioactivity.
Slotin moved at once; he pulled the pieces of plutonium apart with his bare hands. This was virtually an act of suicide for it exposed him to the largest dose of radioactivity. Then he calmly asked his seven co-workers to mark their precise positions at the time of the accident in order that the degree of exposure of each one to the radioactivity could be fixed. Having done this and alerted the medical service, Slotin apologised to his companions and said what turned out exactly true: that he thought that he would die and they would recover.
Slotin had saved the lives of the seven men working with him by cutting to a minimum the time during which the assembly of plutonium was giving out neutrons and radioactive rays.He himself died of radiation sickness nine days later. The setting for his act, the people involved and the disaster are scientific: but this is not the reason why I tell Slotin’s story. I tell it to show that morality – shall we call it heroism in this case? – has the same anatomy the world over. There are two things that make up morality. One is the sense that other people matter: the sense of common loyalty, of charity and tenderness, the sense of human love. The other is a clear judgement of what is at stake: a cold knowledge, without a trace of deception, of precisely what will happen to oneself and to others if one plays either the hero or the coward. This is the highest morality: to combine human love with an unflinching, scientific judgement.
I tell the story of Louis Slotin for another reason also. He was an atomic physicist who made a different choice from mine: he was still working on bombs when he died, a year after the war ended. I do not think the less of him because he took one view of a scientist’s duty and I take another. For the essence of morality is not that we should all act alike. The essence of morality is that each of us should deeply search his own conscience – and should then act steadfastly as it tells him to do.
On May 12, 1946, Louis Alexander Slotin was carrying out an experiment in the laboratories at Los Alamos with seven other men. Slotin was good with his hands; he liked using his head; he was bright and a little daring – in short, he was like any other man anywhere who is happy in his work.At Los Alamos, Slotin, then aged thirty-five, was concerned with the assembly of pieces of plutonium, each of which alone is too small to be dangerous and which will only sustain a chain reaction when they are put together. Atomic bombs are, in fact, detonated in this way, by suddenly bringing together several harmless pieces of plutonium so that they form a larger, explosive mass. Slotin himself has tested the assembly of the first experimental bomb which had been exploded in New Mexico in July 1945.Now, nearly a year later, Slotin was again doing an experiment of this kind. He was nudging toward one another, by tiny movements, several pieces of plutonium, in order to ensure that their total mass would be large enough to make a chain reaction; and he was doing it, as experts are tempted to do such things, with a screwdriver. The screwdriver slipped, the pieces of plutonium came a fraction too close together and suddenly the instruments which everyone was watching registered a great upsurge of neutrons which is the sign that a chain reaction has begun. The assembly was filling the room with radioactivity.
Slotin moved at once; he pulled the pieces of plutonium apart with his bare hands. This was virtually an act of suicide for it exposed him to the largest dose of radioactivity. Then he calmly asked his seven co-workers to mark their precise positions at the time of the accident in order that the degree of exposure of each one to the radioactivity could be fixed. Having done this and alerted the medical service, Slotin apologised to his companions and said what turned out exactly true: that he thought that he would die and they would recover.
Slotin had saved the lives of the seven men working with him by cutting to a minimum the time during which the assembly of plutonium was giving out neutrons and radioactive rays.He himself died of radiation sickness nine days later. The setting for his act, the people involved and the disaster are scientific: but this is not the reason why I tell Slotin’s story. I tell it to show that morality – shall we call it heroism in this case? – has the same anatomy the world over. There are two things that make up morality. One is the sense that other people matter: the sense of common loyalty, of charity and tenderness, the sense of human love. The other is a clear judgement of what is at stake: a cold knowledge, without a trace of deception, of precisely what will happen to oneself and to others if one plays either the hero or the coward. This is the highest morality: to combine human love with an unflinching, scientific judgement.
I tell the story of Louis Slotin for another reason also. He was an atomic physicist who made a different choice from mine: he was still working on bombs when he died, a year after the war ended. I do not think the less of him because he took one view of a scientist’s duty and I take another. For the essence of morality is not that we should all act alike. The essence of morality is that each of us should deeply search his own conscience – and should then act steadfastly as it tells him to do.
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