DENVER — Francis G. Slack, one of the American scientists to witness the splitting of the atom for the first time, has died at the age of 88.
Slack died of a heart attack Tuesday while cruising the Caribbean on the ship Royal Viking Sea, according to his niece, Enid Slack of Denver. She said services were pending return of his body to the United States.
While chairman of the Physics Department at Vanderbilt University in 1939, he was a visiting lecturer at Columbia University. His niece said Slack worked with Dr. John R. Dunning, Dr. Eugene T. Booth and Nobel Laureate Enrico Fermi, witnessing the splitting of the atom for the first time, in a basement laboratory at Columbia.
In 1941, Slack was assigned to the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb.
Slack was one of the founders of the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society, receiving its recognition in 1973 for outstanding accomplishments in the teaching of physics, and was one of the incorporators of the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies.
Slack was born Nov. 1, 1897, in Superior, Wis., and graduated a Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Georgia in 1918. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1926, where he began teaching.
After studying at the University of Munich, Germany, he became a professor of physics at Vanderbilt in 1928. He was department chairman from 1938 until his retirement in 1950.