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National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Theodore Perlman

EngineerLos Alamos, NM

Tinian Island
EngineerManhattan Project VeteranProject Alberta

Theodore Perlman was an American engineer working at the Los Alamos laboratory during the Manhattan Project. He was 23 when he took part in the deadly “tickling the dragon’s tail” experiment with Louis Slotin. He only received 7 rads of radiation from the accident and survived without showing any clinical or laboratory evidence of radiation damage. Prior to that, he had participated in Project Alberta on Tinian Island.

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