LAS VEGAS — Long before Britney Spears' wedding made headlines, another blonde held Sin City in thrall.

The giddy bombshell was photographed in 1957, red-lipsticked mouth in a gaping grin, arms aloft and wearing a makeshift mushroom-cloud bathing suit of fluffy cotton blobs. With a ribbon of barren desert horizon stretching behind her lithesome, high-heeled figure, Miss Atomic Bomb is emblematic of a bygone American era, part of Las Vegas' flamboyant past.

And one man is out to find her.

She's "truly a piece of our popular culture," said Robert Friedrichs, a physical scientist with the National Nuclear Security Administration who has spent six months sleuthing to uncover the identity of Miss Atomic Bomb.

During the 1950s heyday of nuclear testing, the Nevada Test Site — about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas — was a tourist attraction.

"It was new, it was different, it was exciting," Friedrichs said. People "wanted to see it and be a part of it."

The atomic craze spawned cocktails and happy hours scheduled around watching the nuclear blasts poolside, and spurred families to head up nearby Angel Peak to see the flashes.

Residents "also were caught up in the whole revelry of it," said Bill Johnson, director of the Atomic Testing Museum, scheduled to open this month.

"It was a symbol of American power and might," said Jon Hunner, a New Mexico State University history professor who specializes in the atomic West.

With the Atomic Testing Museum a stone's throw from the Strip, Friedrichs thought it was time to put a name with that former showgirl's famous face. He has combed through news archives and university libraries, and with the help of a local newspaper article, Friedrichs made contact with two former Copa Girls who worked with Miss Atomic Bomb at the Sands Hotel. They knew her name — Lee Merlin — but couldn't tell him much else.

She performed there from 1954 to 1957, but "was very bookish," said Carolyn MacMullen, 78, of Las Vegas, a retired Copa Girl who danced alongside Merlin. "She had a little bit different sense of humor ... very dry."

And Merlin apparently never mentioned a hometown or family that might give clues to her current whereabouts.

"She dropped off the face of the Earth," Friedrichs said.

That leaves the amateur historian with little besides a couple of three-ring binders of photos and documents. If he finds her, he would love to show her how iconic her image has become — and ask her to speak at the museum.

Merlin's picture is one of hundreds of nuclear-themed shots that Las Vegas produced in hopes of drawing visitors to what was then an out-of-the-way spot. The mushroom cloud appeared everywhere from the Clark County seal to a local high school's yearbook cover.

Retired Las Vegas photographer Don English photographed Miss Atomic Bomb and dreamed up the mushroom-cloud swimsuit.

"We were shooting so many atom bombs, we tried to do anything that was a little bit different," he said.

People later learned of the dangers of radioactive fallout, which harmed those downwind in St. George, Utah, more than it did Vegas residents.

Nuclear advocates contend such weapons were vital to ending World War II and maintaining American security.

The new Atomic Testing Museum seeks to present differing perspectives in a multimedia exhibit on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. The material takes visitors from the test site's establishment in 1950 to today's moratorium on nuclear testing, and includes context of the weapons' effects on scientists, the local environment and nearby American Indian tribes.

The Nevada Test Site, about the size of Rhode Island, remains in a state of "official readiness," said Johnson, the museum director. Johnson hopes the museum's estimated 100,000 annual visitors will understand the historical circumstances that produced nuclear testing.

Friedrichs said he believed an examination of our nuclear past could shed light on "decisions today in how we deal with the threats that exist." Meantime, his search for Merlin continues. "This is one of these things I'll keep working at it until I die," he said.