Contents
Murray Gell-Mann
Proposing quarks: the building blocks inside protons and neutrons.
The Eightfold Way · Quark model
- Born
- 15 September 1929
- Birthplace
- New York City, United States
- Died
- 24 May 2019
More people
Murray Gell-Mann
American theoretical physicist who helped turn a bewildering collection of particles into an ordered system. He later brought researchers from different disciplines together to study complexity.
Early life
An early student
Entered Yale at fourteen after graduating from school in New York.
Physics training
Earned his doctorate at MIT in 1951 under Victor Weisskopf.
Career
- 1950s
Research beginnings
Worked at the Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Chicago before joining Caltech in 1955.
- 1969
Nobel recognition
Received the physics prize for classifying elementary particles and explaining their interactions.
- 1984
Santa Fe Institute
Helped establish an institute devoted to complex systems across the sciences.
Contributions
The Eightfold Way
Organized related particles into patterns, independently of Yuval Ne’eman.
Quark model
Proposed constituent particles; George Zweig independently developed a similar model.
The Quark and the Jaguar
Explored simplicity and complexity for a general readership.
Beyond physics
Languages and wildlife
His interests included historical linguistics, archaeology and birdwatching.
Conservation
Served on the board of the Wildlife Conservation Society and supported environmental research.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional biography and research ↗Photo: World Economic Forum. CC BY-SA 2.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
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