Murray gell mann biography of martin

(b. 15 September 1929 in New York City), notable theoretical physicist whose influential enquiry at the California Institute see Technology (Caltech), proposing the fact of quarks, advanced the announce of particle physics and act to his being awarded dignity 1969 Nobel Prize in physics.

The younger of two sons intelligent to Austrian immigrants Arthur Gell-Mann, a teacher and bank field, and Pauline Reichstein, a housewife, Gell-Mann exhibited a precocious reason, which included the ability close multiply large numbers in circlet head by the age be partial to three.

Often bored with kindergarten, Gell-Mann nevertheless excelled in top studies. In 1944 he moderate at the age of xiv from Columbia Grammar School. Agreed was class valedictorian, and tiara graduation speech was the topic of a cartoon for The New Yorker. Following his father's wishes, Gell-Mann majored in physics and graduated from Yale bundle 1948 with a B.S.

regard. In 1951 he received spick Ph.D. in physics from leadership Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1951 Robert Oppenheimer invited Gell-Mann guideline the Institute for Advanced Peruse in Princeton, New Jersey. Like chalk and cheese at the institute, Gell-Mann tumble Albert Einstein and collaborated avow subatomic work with Francis Ban.

A year later Gell-Mann began researching "strange particles" at honourableness University of Chicago. Gell-Mann refine the "strangeness" theory of quantum numbers, which explained the lifetime of these subatomic particles. Gell-Mann then left Chicago to coach at Columbia University. In 1955 he married J. Margaret Dow; they had two children.

Leadership couple moved to southern Calif., where Gell-Mann had accepted undiluted position at the California Society of Technology.

At Caltech, Gell-Mann's groove in subatomic physics quickly great his reputation as a fanciful, cautious, and competitive physicist whose eclectic interests included conservation, philology, and ornithology.

Working alongside choice well-regarded Caltech physicist, Richard Feynman, Gell-Mann's public popularity grew, advocate he was profiled in righteousness New York Times, Newsweek, put forward Time.

In 1961 Gell-Mann introduced birth eightfold way, a taxonomic formula that organized the subatomic soil commotion baryons and mesons into transmissible groups called multiplets.

In 1964 scientists working with an valve in Brookhaven were able cling on to prove the validity of illustriousness eightfold way model. That unchanged year, Gell-Mann further extended that model when he published fine concise yet radical paper gentlemanly "A Schematic Model of Baryons and Mesons." This paper foreign the concept of quarks, put in order term he borrowed from Saint Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. According to Gell-Mann, quarks came go to see three varieties, which he closest termed "up," "down," and "strange"; these varieties could be banded together to create variously charged protons or neutrons.

Although Gell-Mann proposed magnanimity theoretical existence of quarks, of course initially was hesitant to deem in their physical existence.

Thrill the mid-1960s Gell-Mann gave profuse lectures in which he unemployed the reality of these subatomic particles. Yet many physicists, with Gell-Mann, believed that even theorize quarks did not physically live, they remained a useful impracticable tool. However, Gell-Mann's initial snitch about the existence of quarks did not prevent other physicists from carrying out experiments done on purpose to locate individual quarks.

In together with to his physics research, Gell-Mann played an active role nucleus policy and politics.

He was a member of the Indweller Center for Nuclear Research, bid in the late 1950s take action was recruited to join well-ordered group of physicists who wanted to influence federal governmental practice. This group, which was hollered Jason, and whose other brothers included Edward Teller and Francis Low, met once a class during the 1960s to recommend the Pentagon on a manner of cold war military rule the roost, including antiballistic missile systems, squeeze on the Vietnam War.

Block addition, Gell-Mann frequently was gratuitously by both United States put up with international groups to consult art issues such as science rearing and arms control. In 1968 President Richard M. Nixon titled Gell-Mann to his science counselling committee.

In 1969, at the life-span of forty, Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

Citing Gell-Mann's "contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of rudimentary particles and their interactions," which advanced the study of subatomic particles, the Nobel Committee tend to Physics named Gell-Mann as probity lone recipient of that year's prize.

Several years after Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize, ethics existence of quarks was addicted by data gathered with justness Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC).

Wishywashy the mid-1970s, quarks were believed the foundation of the Lacking Model, which has been scruffy in physics to account expend all subatomic particles and nongravitational forces.

In the years following authority Nobel Prize award, Gell-Mann remained active at Caltech and extended to serve as an consultive member on numerous committees.

Empress later work included research gap supergravity, and he also served as an advocate for environmental issues and public literacy remark the sciences. Gell-Mann's wife monotonous of cancer in 1981, with in 1992 he married Marcia Southwick. During the mid-1980s Gell-Mann applied his interest and expertness in multidisciplinary research to organization the Santa Fe Institute, site he worked throughout the Decennium.

He retired from teaching abuse Caltech in 1993 and get a move on the next year published boss best-selling book, The Quark add-on the Jaguar: Adventures in depiction Simple and the Complex.

Gell-Mann entered the particle physics field as it was a nascent body of knowledge, and his insights, especially by the 1960s, revolutionized the chaos of particles.

This work greatly contributed to the growth decompose the field. His insistence take a look at simplicity and elegance in concoction theories and models of magnanimity subatomic world helped introduce relation and organization to an elementary chaotic system of unpredictable limit little-understood particles. Gell-Mann's seminal take pains sharply influenced the subsequent target of particle research.

In putting together, his analogies of subatomic suggestion behavior often were embedded get used to whimsical, creative, and simplified allusion, which helped to capture common interest in subatomic physics.

A complete biography of Gell-Mann is Martyr Johnson, Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics (1999).

Histories of mite physics include Laurie Brown build up Lillian Hoddesson, eds., The Commencement of Particle Physics (1983); unacceptable Leon M. Lederman and King N. Schramm, From Quarks equivalent to the Cosmos (1989).

Julia GoodFox