Strange Beauty

Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics

By: George Johnson

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Paperback | 17 October 2000

At a Glance

Paperback
464 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 13.34 x 2.54

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With a New Afterword

"Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."--Richard Feynman

Acclaimed science writer George Johnson brings his formidable reporting skills to the first biography of Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant, irascible man who revolutionized modern particle physics with his models of the quark and the Eightfold Way.

Born into a Jewish immigrant family on New York's East 14th Street, Gell-Mann's prodigious talent was evident from an early age--he entered Yale at 15, completed his Ph.D. at 21, and was soon identifying the structures of the world's smallest components and illuminating the elegant symmetries of the universe.

Beautifully balanced in its portrayal of an extraordinary and difficult man, interpreting the concepts of advanced physics with scrupulous clarity and simplicity, Strange Beauty is a tour-de-force of both science writing and biography.

Industry Reviews

"A multidimensional portrait of a brilliant but tormented man who dominated elementary physics for twenty years... An almost Shakespearean hero."--The New York Times Book Review "Skillfully and engagingly written."--Science

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Biographies & True Stories Biographies Science, Technology & Medicine Biographies Science Physics Nuclear Physics Science in General History of Science

Prologue: On the Trail to La Vega	p. 3
A Hyphenated American: Czernowitz, Vienna, and New York City	p. 18
The Walking Encyclopedia: New York City and New Haven	p. 38
A Feeling for the Mechanism: Cambridge	p. 56
Village of the Demigods: Princeton	p. 76
The Magic Memory: Chicago	p. 86
"No Excellent Beauty": Chicago, Princeton, Paris, Urbana, Glasgow, Copenhagen, and Pisa	p. 107
A Lopsided Universe: Pasadena and Moscow	p. 134
Field of Dreams: Pasadena and Kiev	p. 160
The Magic Eightball: Paris, Entebbe, the Serengeti, Pasadena, and San Diego	p. 175
Holy Trinity: Geneva, Cambridge, New York, and Pasadena	p. 198
Aces and Quarks: Pasadena, Udaipur, Kyoto, Dubna, Kathmandu, and Sapporo	p. 219
The Swedish Prize: Pasadena, Princeton, and Stockholm	p. 241
Quantum Chromodynamics: Aspen, Pasadena, Geneva, and Paris	p. 267
Superphysics: Pasadena, Aspen, and Tesuque	p. 291
From the Simple to the Complex: Sant Feliu de Guixols, Pasadena, Lima, and Santa Fe	p. 310
The Quark and the Jaguar: Santa Fe, New York City	p. 329
Epilogue: Valentine's Day, 1997	p. 347
Glossary	p. 355
Sources and Acknowledgments	p. 361
Notes	p. 365
Bibliography	p. 405
Index	p. 411
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Strange Beauty

Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

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Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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