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

George Johnson

Vintage, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 434 pages

No scientist has done more to shape our understanding of the universe than Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winner considered by many colleagues to be the most brilliant physicist of his generation. His discovery of the quark and the Eightfold Way were cornerstones for all that followed in particle physics, the effort to understand the very stuff of creation, In this, the first biography of Gell-Mann, George Johnson tells the story of a remarkable life.

About the author

George Johnson was born in 1952, in Fayetteville, Ark. He has worked for newspapers in Albuquerque, N.Mex. and Minneapolis, Minn., and is a science writer for the New York Times. His first book, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics (1984), won a special achievement award in nonfiction from the Los Angeles chapter of International PEN. Many of Johnson's other books evidence thoughtful, spiritual examinations of the relation between man and science. Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith and the Search for Order (1995) is about the diversity of ideas in New Mexico. Johnson draws parallels between Los Alamos and the worshipful view of scientific discovery and the high desert, a sacred place for the Tewa Indians and Hermanos Penitentes.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-century Physics
• Author: George Johnson
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Vintage, 2001
• ISBN: 0099284324, 9780099284321
• Length: 434 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology; Religion / General; Science / Physics / General; Science / Physics / Nuclear; Science / Physics / Quantum Theory