LAS VEGAS (AP) — It wasn't going to be easy to track down the woman who came to be known as “Miss Atomic Bomb." All Robert Friedrichs had to go on was a stage name he found printed under an archival newspaper photo that showed her posing with other Las Vegas showgirls.

It would take him more than two decades to unravel the mystery of Lee A. Merlin's true identity.

Friedrichs, 81, isn’t a detective. He’s a historian and a retired scientist who got his start during the atomic age, a complicated moment in American history when the line was blurred between fear and fascination with nuclear power.

Between 1951 and 1992, hundreds of nuclear tests were performed, mostly underground, in the desert outside Las Vegas. But it was the massive mushroom clouds from the above-ground nuclear blasts tha

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