“they tell her about the scientist at the Manhattan project who touched plutonium for some reason to save others in the room and he died a horrific death.”
Who was that?
Some FReepers explained it in detail in a few of the posts above
There was a group at Los Alamos who were working on how to handle and separate the plutonium to prevent a critical mass. The reaction got out of hand and he was poisoned. His name was Haroutune Krikor Daghlian, Jr.
The second was Louis Alexander Slotin who received a lethal dose of radiation in 1946, after the war.
I remember reading about it in high school, the scientist’s name was Louis Slotin.