Murray Gell-Mann, the Eightfold Way, and Quantum ChromodynamicsCourtesy of the Santa Fe Institute · Resources with Additional Information ‘In 1969, Professor Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Professor Gell-Mann's "eightfold way" theory brought order to the chaos created by the discovery of some 100 particles in the atom's nucleus. Then he found that all of those particles, including the neutron and proton, are composed of fundamental building blocks that he named "quarks." The quarks are permanently confined by forces coming from the exchange of "gluons." He and others later constructed the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons, called "quantum chromodynamics," which seems to account for all the nuclear particles and their strong interactions." ... Although he is a theoretical physicist, Professor Gell-Mann's interests extend to many other subjects, including natural history, historical linguistics, archaeology, history, depth psychology, and creative thinking... . His recent research at the Santa Fe Institute has focused on the subject of complex adaptive systems... . He is also concerned with how knowledge and understanding are to be extracted from the welter of "information" that can now be transmitted and stored as a result of the digital revolution.' Murray Gell-Mann is author of the popular science book, The Quark and the Jaguar, Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. Among the awards he has received is the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award. - Edited excerpts from
Murray Gell-Mann
Brief Biography
Resources with Additional InformationAdditional information about Murray Gell-Mann and his research is available in full-text and on the Web. Documents:
The
Eightfold Way: A Theory of Strong Interaction Symmetry, DOE Technical Report, March 15, 1961
Symmetries of Baryons and Mesons; Physical Review, Vol. 125, Issue 3: 1067-1084, February 1, 1962 Nonleptonic Weak Decays and the Eightfold Way; Physical Review Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 6: 155-156, February 10, 1964 Octet Enhancement, DOE Technical Report, August 1964 Triplets and Triality, DOE Technical Report, August 1964 Current Algebra, DOE Technical Report, October 1966 Relativistic Quark Model as Representation of Current Algebra, DOE Technical Report, October 1966 Additional Web Pages:
Murray Gell-Mann, Santa
Fe Institute
The Many Worlds of Murray Gell-Mann, physicsweb A Dedicated Conservationist Embraces The Science of Complexity, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Murray Gell-Mann, Emory University Physicist Gell-Mann Seeks Basis of Complexity |