Murray Gell-Mann

1 Early life and education

Murray Gell-Mann (/mri l mn/; born September 15, 1929) is an American physicist who received the
1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory
of elementary particles. He is the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the
California Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Fellow and co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute, Professor in
the Physics and Astronomy Department of the University
of New Mexico, and the Presidential Professor of Physics
and Medicine at the University of Southern California.[1]
Gell-Mann has spent several periods at CERN, among
others as a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in 1972.[2]

Gell-Mann was born in lower Manhattan into a family

of Jewish immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[4][5] His parents were Pauline (ne Reichstein) and
Arthur Isidore Gell-Mann, who taught English as a Second Language (ESL).[6]
Propelled by an intense boyhood curiosity and love for
nature and mathematics, he graduated valedictorian from
the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and subsequently entered Yale at the age of 15 as a member of
Jonathan Edwards College. At Yale, he participated in
the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition
and was on the team representing Yale University (along
with Murray Gerstenhaber and Henry O. Pollak) that won
the second prize in 1947. Gell-Mann earned a bachelors
degree in physics from Yale in 1948, and a PhD in physics
from MIT in 1951. His advisor at MIT was Victor Weisskopf.

He introduced, independently of George Zweig, the

quarkconstituents of all hadronshaving rst identied the SU(3) avor symmetry of hadrons. This symmetry is now understood to underlie the light quarks, extending isospin to include strangeness, a quantum number
which he also discovered.
He developed the VA theory of the weak interaction in
collaboration with Richard Feynman. In the 1960s, he
introduced current algebra as a method of systematically
exploiting symmetries to extract predictions from quark
models, in the absence of reliable dynamical theory. This
method led to model-independent sum rules conrmed by
experiment and provided starting points underpinning the
development of the standard theory of elementary particles.

2 Physics career

In 1958, Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, in parallel with the independent team of George Sudarshan and
Robert Marshak, discovered the chiral structures of the
weak interaction in physics. This work followed the experimental discovery of the violation of parity by ChienGell-Mann, along with Maurice Lvy, developed the
Shiung Wu, as suggested by Chen Ning Yang and Tsungsigma model of pions, which describes low-energy
Dao Lee, theoretically.
pion interactions. Modifying the integer-charged quark
model of Moo-Young Han and Yoichiro Nambu, Harald Gell-Manns work in the 1950s involved recently discovFritzsch and Gell-Mann were the rst to write down the ered cosmic ray particles that came to be called kaons and
modern accepted theory of quantum chromodynamics, hyperons. Classifying these particles led him to propose
although they did not anticipate asymptotic freedom. In that a quantum number called strangeness would be con1969 he received the Nobel Prize in physics for his con- served by the strong and the electromagnetic interactions,
tributions and discoveries concerning the classication of but not by the weak interactions. Another of Gell-Manns
ideas is the Gell-Mann-Okubo formula, which was, inielementary particles and their interactions.[3]
tially, a formula based on empirical results, but was later
Gell-Mann is responsible, together with Pierre Raexplained by his quark model. Gell-Mann and Abraham
mond and Richard Slansky, and independently of Peter
Pais were involved in explaining several puzzling aspects
Minkowski, Rabindra Mohapatra, Goran Senjanovic,
of the physics of these particles.
Sheldon Lee Glashow, and Tsutomu Yanagida, for the
see-saw theory of neutrino masses, that produces masses In 1961, this led him (and Kazuhiko Nishijima) to inat the large scale in any theory with a right-handed neu- troduce a classication scheme for hadrons, elementrino. He is also known to have played a large role in tary particles that participate in the strong interaction.
keeping string theory alive through the 1970s and early (This scheme had been independently proposed by Yuval
1980s, supporting that line of research at a time when it Ne'eman.) This scheme is now explained by the quark
model. Gell-Mann referred to the scheme as the Eightfold
was unpopular.
Way, because of the octets of particles in the classica1

AWARDS AND HONORS

tion. (The term is a reference to the eightfold way of and with learning.[3][11] Along with S. A. Starostin, he esBuddhism.)
tablished the Evolution of Human Languages project[12] at
In 1964, Gell-Mann and, independently, George Zweig the Santa Fe Institute.
went on to postulate the existence of quarks, particles of
which the hadrons of this scheme are composed. The
name was coined by Gell-Mann and is a reference to the
novel Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce (Three quarks for
Muster Mark!" book 2, episode 4.) Zweig had referred
to the particles as aces,[7] but Gell-Manns name caught
on. Quarks, antiquarks, and gluons were soon established
as the underlying elementary objects in the study of the
structure of hadrons. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in
physics in 1969 for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classication of elementary particles and their
interactions.[8]

He is currently the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor

of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at California Institute
of Technology as well as a University Professor in the
Physics and Astronomy Department of the University
of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the
Presidential Professor of Physics and Medicine at the
University of Southern California. He is a member of
the editorial board of the Encyclopdia Britannica. In
1984 Gell-Mann co-founded the Santa Fe Institutea
non-prot theoretical research institute in Santa Fe, New
Mexicoto study complex systems and disseminate the
notion of a separate interdisciplinary study of complexity
In 1972 he and Harald Fritzsch introduced the conserved theory.
quantum number "color charge", and later, together with He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced
Heinrich Leutwyler, they coined the term quantum chro- Study in 1951, and a visiting research professor at the
modynamics (QCD) as the gauge theory of the strong in- University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign from 1952 to
teraction. The quark model is a part of QCD, and it has 1953. He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia
been robust enough naturally to accommodate the dis- University and an associate professor at the University of
covery of new "avors" of quarks, which superseded the Chicago in 1954-55 before moving to the California Ineightfold way scheme.
stitute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until
he retired in 1993.
During the 1990s, Gell-Manns interest turned to the
emerging study of complexity. He played a central role in As a humanist and an agnostic, Gell-Mann is a Humanthe founding of the Santa Fe Institute, where he continues ist Laureate in the International Academy of Humanto work as a distinguished professor.
ism.[13][14]
He wrote a popular science book about these matters, The Gell-Mann endorsed Barack Obama for the United States
Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the presidency in October 2008.[15]
Complex. The title of the book is taken from a line of a
poem by Arthur Sze: The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night.[9]
4 Awards and honors
The author George Johnson has written a biography of
Gell-Mann, which is titled Strange Beauty: Murray GellMann, and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics, which
Dr. Gell-Mann has criticized as inaccurate. The Nobel
Prizewinning physicist Philip Anderson, in his chapter
on Gell-Mann,[10] says that Johnsons biography is excellent. Both Anderson and Johnson say that Gell-Mann is
a perfectionist and that his semibiographical, The Quark
and the Jaguar is consequently incomplete.

Nobel Prize in Physics (1969)

Ernest O. Lawrence Award (1966)
Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award
(1962)
Albert Einstein Medal (2005)
Yale University D.Sc (h.c.), 1959

Personal life

Gell-Mann married Marcia Southwick in 1992, after the

death of his rst wife, J. Margaret Dow (d. 1981), whom
he married in 1955. His children are Elizabeth Sarah
Gell-Mann (b. 1956) and Nicholas Webster Gell-Mann
(b. 1963); and he has a stepson, Nicholas Southwick
Levis (b. 1978).
Gell-Mann has interests in birdwatching, collecting
antiques, ranching, historical linguistics, archaeology,
natural history, the psychology of creative thinking, other
subjects connected with biological, and cultural evolution

American Physical Society Dannie Heineman

Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1959
University of Chicago Sc.D.(h.c.), 1967
Franklin Medal, 1967
National Academy of Sciences John J. Carty
Award, 1968[16]
University of Illinois Sc.D.(h.c.), 1968
Wesleyan University Sc.D.(h.c.), 1968
Research Corporation Award, 1969

3
University of Turin, Italy Honorary Doctorate,
1969
University of Utah Sc.D.(h.c.), 1970
Columbia University Sc.D.(h.c.), 1977
University of Cambridge, England Sc.D.(h.c.),
1980
United Nations Environment Programme Roll of
Honor for Environmental Achievement (The Global
500), 1988
World Federation of Scientists Erice Prize, 1990
University of Oxford, England D.Sc.(h.c.), 1992
Southern Illinois University Sc.D.(h.c.), 1993

[8] Nobel Prize in Physics, 1969

[9] Murray Gell-Mann - Physicist - The decision to write
The Quark and the Jaguar - Web of Stories.
[10] Anderson, Philip W. (2011). Ch. V Genius. Search for
Polymaths Elementary Particles. More and Dierent:
Notes from a Thoughtful Curmudgeon. World Scientic.
pp. 2412. ISBN 978-981-4350-14-3.Philip Anderson,
More and Dierent, Chapter V, World Scientic, 2011.
[11] SANTA FE, New Mexico (NM) Political Contributions
by Individuals

[12] Peregrine, Peter Neal (2009). Ancient Human Migrations: A Multidisciplinary Approach. University
of Utah Press. p. ix. ISBN 978-0-87480-942-8.
Sergei+Starostin+and+I+established+the+Evolution+of+Human+Languages+
Sergei Starostin and I established the Evolution of Human Languages project

University of Florida Sc.D.(h.c.), Doctorate of

Natural Resources, 1994
[13] The International Academy of Humanism at the web Southern Methodist University Sc.D.(h.c.), 1999
American Humanist Association Humanist of the
Year, 2005
Helmholtz-Medal of the Berlin-Brandenberg
Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2014[17]

See also
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
Quark
Gell-Mann matrices

site of the Council for Secular Humanism. Retrieved 18

October 2007. Some of this information is also at the
International Humanist and Ethical Union website
[14] Herman Wouk (2010). The Language God Talks: On
Science and Religion. Hachette Digital, Inc. ISBN
9780316096751. Feynman, Gell-Man, Weinberg, and
their peers accept Newtons incomparable stature and
shrug o his piety, on the kindly thought that the old man
got into the game too early. ...As for Gell-Mann, he seems
to see nothing to discuss in this entire God business, and
in the index to The Quark and the Jaguar God goes unmentioned. Life he called a complex adaptive system
which produces interesting phenomena such as the jaguar
and Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark. GellMann is a Nobel-class tackler of problems, but for him
the existence of God is not one of them.
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFaTrOFXrs8

Notes

[1] Nobel Prize Winner Appointed Presidential Professor at

USC.

[16] John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science.

National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
[17] http://www.bbaw.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/
pressemitteilungen/portal_factory/PDFs/bbaw-10-2014

[2] CERN-aliated article by Gell-Mann. Springer. Retrieved 11 June 2015.

[3] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/
laureates/1969/gell-mann-bio.html
[4] M. Gell-Mann (October 1997). My Father. Web of Stories. Retrieved 2010-10-01.
[5] J. Brockman (2003). The Making of a Physicist: A talk
with Murray Gell-Mann. Edge.org. Retrieved 2010-1001.
[6] Prole, imdb.com; accessed April 26, 2015.
[7] G. Zweig (1980) [1964]. An SU(3) model for strong interaction symmetry and its breaking II. In D. Lichtenberg and S. Rosen. Developments in the Quark Theory of
Hadrons 1. Hadronic Press. pp. 22101.

7 Further reading
Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the
Oce of Scientic and Technical Information,
United States Department of Energy
Encyclopdia Britannicas Biography of Murray
Gell-Mann
Fritzsch, H.; Gell-Mann, M.; Leutwyler, H. (26
Advantages of the color
November 1973).
octet gluon picture (PDF). Physics Letters B
47 (4): 3658. Bibcode:1973PhLB...47..365F.
doi:10.1016/0370-2693(73)90625-4.

8
Fritzsch, H.; Gell-Mann, M. (1972). Current
algebra- quarks and what else?". In Jackson, J.D.;
Roberts, A.; International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. Proceedings of the XVI International
Conference on High Energy Physics 2. National
Accelerator Laboratory. pp. 135165. OCLC
57672574.
Murray Gell-Mann tells his life story at Web of Stories
Strange Beauty home page
The Making of a Physicist: A Talk With Murray
Gell-Mann
Berreby, D. (8 May 1994). The Man Who Knows
Everything. New York Times.
The Man With Five Brains
The many worlds of Murray Gell-Mann
The Simple and the Complex, Part I: The Quantum
and the Quasi-Classical with Murray Gell-Mann,
Ph.D.
Nobel Prize Biography

External links
Inspire prole of Murray Gell-Manns publication
(nuclear and particle physics)
Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the
Department of Energy, Oce of Scientic & Technical Information
Gell-Manns Home Page at SFI
TED Talks: Murray Gell-Mann on beauty and truth
in physics at TED in 2007
TED Talks: Murray Gell-Mann on the ancestor of
language at TED
Murray Gell-Mann Video Interview with the
Academy of Achievement in 1990
Murray Gell-Mann talks quarks (Video)
Murray Gell-Mann at the Mathematics Genealogy
Project

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