Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth Century Physics

Abstract

It was a pleasure to review this book about Murray Gell-Mann and particle physics. Gell-Mann had already made his mark on theoretical physics while in his early twenties, and became one of the dominant figures in particle physics for over 30 years. A child prodigy, he started undergraduate studies at Yale at the age of 14, postgraduate work at MIT at 18, and after further research at Princeton and Chicago, obtained full tenure at Caltech at the age of 25. He proposed the concept of strangeness as a quantum number and the `eightfold way' - a method of classifying the then bewildering proliferation of hadrons, the strongly-interacting particles, into orderly patterns. In the 19th century, Mendeleev's classification of the known chemical elements led to the prediction of the existence and some of the properties of new elements, and was later explained by the electron-nucleus structure of atoms. Similarly the structure of the eightfold way predicted the existence of new particles; in particular one named Omega, with strangeness -3. This could only decay relatively slowly by the weak interaction and hence would leave a track in a bubble chamber. Its discovery at Brookhaven was a triumph of the theory, whose underlying group structure suggested the idea of quarks, peculiar hypothetical objects with fractional charge. In 1969, at the age of 40, Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the classification of elementary particles and their interactions. Many unsuccessful searches for isolated quarks were carried out, and for a long time Gell-Mann sat on the fence, undecided whether quarks were just useful notions or real constituents of the hadrons. Convincing evidence for their existence within the proton came in the 1970s and a theory of their interactions and their confinement within hadrons was developed as QCD - quantum chromodynamics. Gell-Mann, now 70, has continued to be active and has shifted his interests into complexity theory. This is a splendid book, and very well written. The author, a professional science writer, has skilfully interwoven Gell-Mann's life with an account of particle physics in the second half of the century. The book traces Gell-Mann's career and explains in non-technical terms the concepts of modern particle physics, much of which was influenced greatly by his ideas. It shows Gell-Mann's wide interests, encyclopaedic knowledge, and his sometimes difficult relationships with other scientists. Gell-Mann also did not like journalists, and did not welcome the suggestion of a biography, particularly since his agent had suggested that an autobiography might be very lucrative. However, strangely for a man of his great insights into the physical world, he appeared to suffer from writer's block, which delayed the publication of some of his ideas. He never wrote up his Nobel speech and apparently suffered great anguish in producing a book aimed at the general reader. Perhaps for this reason, he finally accepted that his biography would never be written by himself, and allowed the author to tape record several lengthy interviews. George Johnson also interviewed many other people and made extensive use of library material. The result makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in physics or in the personality of a very gifted and complex person. I recommend it highly.