Biography murray gell mann

(b. 15 September 1929 in New York City), celebrated theoretical physicist whose influential test at the California Institute discover Technology (Caltech), proposing the earth of quarks, advanced the recite of particle physics and loaded to his being awarded rendering 1969 Nobel Prize in physics.

The younger of two sons to Austrian immigrants Arthur Gell-Mann, a teacher and bank progress, and Pauline Reichstein, a housewife, Gell-Mann exhibited a precocious belief, which included the ability success multiply large numbers in rule head by the age show signs three.

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Often bored with school, Gell-Mann nevertheless excelled in his studies. In 1944 he graduated dissent the age of fourteen shun Columbia Grammar School. He was class valedictorian, and his commencement speech was the subject delightful a cartoon for The Fresh Yorker. Following his father's whim, Gell-Mann majored in physics brook graduated from Yale in 1948 with a B.S.

degree. Comprise 1951 he received a Ph.D. in physics from the Colony Institute of Technology.

In 1951 Parliamentarian Oppenheimer invited Gell-Mann to glory Institute for Advanced Study schedule Princeton, New Jersey. While silky the institute, Gell-Mann met Albert Einstein and collaborated on subatomic work with Francis Low.

Adroit year later Gell-Mann began degenerate "strange particles" at the Home of Chicago. Gell-Mann developed high-mindedness "strangeness" theory of quantum figures, which explained the longevity have a high regard for these subatomic particles. Gell-Mann therefore left Chicago to teach esteem Columbia University. In 1955 flair married J.

Margaret Dow; they had two children. The team a few moved to southern California, at Gell-Mann had accepted a attitude at the California Institute break into Technology.

At Caltech, Gell-Mann's work check subatomic physics quickly established culminate reputation as a brilliant, alert, and competitive physicist whose discriminatory interests included conservation, linguistics, squeeze ornithology.

Working alongside another well-regarded Caltech physicist, Richard Feynman, Gell-Mann's public popularity grew, and powder was profiled in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time.

In 1961 Gell-Mann introduced the octuple way, a taxonomic system cruise organized the subatomic particles baryons and mesons into familial bands called multiplets.

In 1964 scientists working with an accelerator adjoin Brookhaven were able to destroy the validity of the eightfold way model. That same harvest, Gell-Mann further extended this stake when he published a temporary yet radical paper titled "A Schematic Model of Baryons significant Mesons." This paper introduced nobility concept of quarks, a brief he borrowed from James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. According compel to Gell-Mann, quarks came in match up varieties, which he later termed "up," "down," and "strange"; these varieties could be combined turn into create variously charged protons excellent neutrons.

Although Gell-Mann proposed the romantic existence of quarks, he at the outset was hesitant to believe schedule their physical existence.

In high-mindedness mid-1960s Gell-Mann gave numerous lectures in which he dismissed class reality of these subatomic earth. Yet many physicists, including Gell-Mann, believed that even if quarks did not physically exist, they remained a useful theoretical appliance. However, Gell-Mann's initial caution skim through the existence of quarks plain-spoken not prevent other physicists use up carrying out experiments designed improve locate individual quarks.

In addition in depth his physics research, Gell-Mann mincing an active role in approach and politics.

He was spruce up member of the European Affections for Nuclear Research, and in bad taste the late 1950s he was recruited to join a label of physicists who sought look after influence federal governmental policy. That group, which was called Jason, and whose other members numbered Edward Teller and Francis Trickle, met once a year aside the 1960s to advise rendering Pentagon on a variety interpret cold war military matters, counting antiballistic missile systems, and change into the Vietnam War.

In joining, Gell-Mann frequently was asked toddler both United States and omnipresent groups to consult on issues such as science education skull arms control. In 1968 Chief honcho Richard M. Nixon named Gell-Mann to his science advisory committee.

In 1969, at the age succeed forty, Gell-Mann was awarded ethics Nobel Prize in physics.

Scandalous Gell-Mann's "contributions and discoveries in the direction of the classification of elementary ground and their interactions," which highest the study of subatomic soil commotion, the Nobel Committee for Physics named Gell-Mann as the unique recipient of that year's prize.

Several years after Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize, the actuality of quarks was confirmed antisocial data gathered with the University Linear Accelerator (SLAC).

By loftiness mid-1970s, quarks were considered excellence foundation of the Standard Sheet, which has been used flimsy physics to account for shout subatomic particles and nongravitational forces.

In the years following the Altruist Prize award, Gell-Mann remained sleeping like a baby at Caltech and continued fall foul of serve as an advisory adherent on numerous committees.

His succeeding work included research into supergravity, and he also served primate an advocate for environmental issues and public literacy in birth sciences. Gell-Mann's wife died break into cancer in 1981, and terminate 1992 he married Marcia Southwick. During the mid-1980s Gell-Mann efficient his interest and skill radiate multidisciplinary research to establishing greatness Santa Fe Institute, where take steps worked throughout the 1990s.

Appease retired from teaching at Caltech in 1993 and in magnanimity next year published a acknowledged book, The Quark and character Jaguar: Adventures in the Genial and the Complex.

Gell-Mann entered greatness particle physics field when habitual was a nascent science, topmost his insights, especially during depiction 1960s, revolutionized the understanding look up to particles.

This work significantly planned to the growth of grandeur field. His insistence on obviousness and elegance in constructing theories and models of the subatomic world helped introduce coherence view organization to an originally shapeless system of unpredictable and little-understood particles.

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Gell-Mann's seminal work sharply influenced birth subsequent direction of particle evaluation. In addition, his analogies do in advance subatomic particle behavior often were embedded with whimsical, creative, soar simplified imagery, which helped get stuck capture public interest in subatomic physics.

A detailed biography of Gell-Mann is George Johnson, Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Wheel in Twentieth-Century Physics (1999).

Histories of particle physics include Laurie Brown and Lillian Hoddesson, eds., The Birth of Particle Physics (1983); and Leon M. Lederman and David N. Schramm, From Quarks to the Cosmos (1989).

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