Murray Gell-Mann

About Murray Gell-Mann

Who is it?: Physicist
Birth Day: September 15, 1929
Birth Place: Manhattan, New York City, U.S., United States
Residence: United States
Citizenship: United States
Alma mater: Yale University (B.Sc.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D.)
Known for: Coining the term 'quark' Elementary particles Effective complexity Gell-Mann and Low theorem Gell-Mann matrices Gell-Mann−Low renormalization group equation Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula Gell-Mann–Okubo mass formula V−A theory Sigma model of pions Seesaw theory of neutrino masses Strangeness Plectics Quark model Crossing symmetry Totalitarian principle
Spouse(s): J. Margaret Dow (m. 1955; d. 1981) Marcia Southwick (m. 1992)
Children: Two plus one stepchild
Awards: Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (1959) E. O. Lawrence Award (1966) John J. Carty Award (1968) Nobel Prize in Physics (1969) ForMemRS (1978)
Fields: Physics
Institutions: Santa Fe Institute University of New Mexico University of Southern California California Institute of Technology University of Chicago
Thesis: Coupling strength and nuclear reactions (1951)
Doctoral advisor: Victor Weisskopf
Doctoral students: Kenneth G. Wilson Sidney Coleman Rod Crewther James Hartle Christopher T. Hill Barton Zwiebach
Website: www.santafe.edu/~mgm

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann was born on September 15, 1929 in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., United States, is Physicist. Murray Gell-Mann is an American physicist, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in the classification of subatomic particles. Interestingly, as a school boy, he never liked physics and took up the subject as his major just on whim. He was only fifteen years old when he entered the University of Yale as an undergraduate student. Fortunately, he soon began to find the subject enthralling and earned his BS when he was barely eighteen. After receiving his PhD from MIT he spent a brief period at the Institute of Advance Study for his post doc. He later joined Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago, where he introduced his concept of ‘strangeness’. However, the longest period of his working life has been at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Later he cofounded Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and joined it as one of its distinguished faculties. Although he was a renowned physicist and has introduced many new concepts, he was interested in a wide range of subject and towards the end of his career he spearheaded the ‘Evolution of Human Languages Program at Santa Fe Institute.
Murray Gell-Mann is a member of Scientists

Does Murray Gell-Mann Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Murray Gell-Mann is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 Murray Gell-Mann - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, Murray Gell-Mann is 95 years, 2 months and 25 days old. Murray Gell-Mann will celebrate 96rd birthday on a Monday 15th of September 2025. Below we countdown to Murray Gell-Mann upcoming birthday.

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Popular As Murray Gell-Mann
Occupation Scientists
Age 95 years old
Zodiac Sign Libra
Born September 15, 1929 (Manhattan, New York City, U.S., United States)
Birthday September 15
Town/City Manhattan, New York City, U.S., United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Murray Gell-Mann’s zodiac sign is Libra. According to astrologers, People born under the sign of Libra are peaceful, fair, and they hate being alone. Partnership is very important for them, as their mirror and someone giving them the ability to be the mirror themselves. These individuals are fascinated by balance and symmetry, they are in a constant chase for justice and equality, realizing through life that the only thing that should be truly important to themselves in their own inner core of personality. This is someone ready to do nearly anything to avoid conflict, keeping the peace whenever possible

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Murray Gell-Mann was born in the Year of the Snake. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Snake are seductive, gregarious, introverted, generous, charming, good with money, analytical, insecure, jealous, slightly dangerous, smart, they rely on gut feelings, are hard-working and intelligent. Compatible with Rooster or Ox.

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Awards and nominations:

Gell-Mann has won numerous awards and honours including

Biography/Timeline

1947

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 College 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 bachelor's degree in physics from Yale in 1948 and a PhD in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1951. His supervisor at MIT was Victor Weisskopf.

1950

Gell-Mann's work in the 1950s involved recently discovered cosmic ray particles that came to be called kaons and hyperons. Classifying these particles led him to propose that a quantum number called strangeness would be conserved by the strong and the electromagnetic interactions, but not by the weak interactions. Another of Gell-Mann's ideas is the Gell-Mann–Okubo formula, which was, initially, a formula based on empirical results, but was later explained by his quark model. Gell-Mann and Abraham Pais were involved in explaining several puzzling aspects of the physics of these particles.

1951

He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1951, and a visiting research professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1952 to 1953. He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University and an associate professor at the University of Chicago in 1954–55 before moving to the California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until he retired in 1993.

1958

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 Chien-Shiung Wu, as suggested by Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, theoretically.

1961

In 1961, this led him (and Kazuhiko Nishijima) to introduce a classification scheme for hadrons, elementary particles that participate in the strong interaction. (This scheme had been independently proposed by Yuval Ne'eman.) This scheme is now explained by the quark model. Gell-Mann referred to the scheme as the Eightfold Way, because of the octets of particles in the classification. (The term is a reference to the eightfold way of Buddhism.)

1964

In 1964, Gell-Mann and, independently, George Zweig 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", but Gell-Mann's 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 classification of elementary particles and their interactions.

1969

Gell-Mann, along with Maurice Lévy, developed the sigma model of pions, which describes low-energy pion interactions. Modifying the integer-charged quark model of Moo-Young Han and Yoichiro Nambu, Harald Fritzsch and Gell-Mann were the first to write down the modern accepted theory of quantum chromodynamics, although they did not anticipate asymptotic freedom. In 1969 he received the Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions.

1970

Gell-Mann is responsible, together with Pierre Ramond and Richard Slansky, and independently of Peter Minkowski, Rabindra Mohapatra, Goran Senjanovic, Sheldon Lee Glashow, and Tsutomu Yanagida, for the seesaw theory of neutrino masses, that produces masses at the large scale in any theory with a right-handed neutrino. He is also known to have played a large role in keeping string theory alive through the 1970s and early 1980s, supporting that line of research at a time when it was unpopular.

1972

In 1972 he and Harald Fritzsch introduced the conserved quantum number "color charge", and later, together with Heinrich Leutwyler, they coined the term quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as the gauge theory of the strong interaction. The quark model is a part of QCD, and it has been robust enough to accommodate in a natural fashion the discovery of new "flavors" of quarks, which superseded the eightfold way scheme.

1981

Gell-Mann married J. Margaret Dow (d. 1981) in 1955: their children are Elizabeth Sarah Gell-Mann (b. 1956) and Nicholas Webster Gell-Mann (b. 1963). Margaret died in 1981, and in 1992 he married Marcia Southwick, with whom he has a stepson, Nicholas Southwick Levis (b. 1978).

1984

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 Encyclopædia Britannica. In 1984 Gell-Mann co-founded the Santa Fe Institute—a non-profit theoretical research institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico—to study complex systems and disseminate the notion of a separate interdisciplinary study of complexity theory.

1990

During the 1990s, Gell-Mann's interest turned to the emerging study of complexity. He played a central role in the founding of the Santa Fe Institute, where he continues to work as a distinguished professor.

2008

Gell-Mann endorsed Barack Obama for the United States presidency in October 2008.

2013

The author George Johnson has written a biography of Gell-Mann, Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann, and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize. Gell-Mann has criticized it as inaccurate. The Nobel Prize–winning Physicist Philip Anderson, in his chapter on Gell-Mann, says that Johnson's 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.

2014

Gell-Mann introduced, independently of George Zweig, the quark—constituents of all hadrons—having first identified the SU(3) flavor 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.

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