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Murray Gell-Mann Biography

Murray Gell-Mann

Murray Gell-Mann (/ˈmʌri ˈɡɛl ˈmæn/; born September 15, 1929) is an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He is the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, a distinguished fellow and co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute, a professor of physics at the University of New Mexico, and the Presidential Professor of Physics and Medicine at the University of Southern California.

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Murray Gell-Mann Quotes

If you know the wavefunction of the universe, why aren't you rich?

Rich, Knows, Ifs, Wavefunction, Universe

Bush is a nice fellow who gives very good parties. I just wish someone would find him a better job than running the country.

Bush, Country, Fellow, Jobs, Running

I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.

Details, Keep, Particle, Particle Physics, Physics

I thought of killing myself but soon decided that I could always try MIT and then kill myself later if it was that bad but that I couldn't commit suicide and then try MIT afterwards. The two operations, suicide and going to MIT, don't commute.

Commute, Kill, Mit, Suicide, Trying, Two

Think how hard physics would be if particles could think

Particles, Physics, Think, Thinking, Would Be

While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

Deal, Done, Exists, Facts, Mechanics, Writing

All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics. . . It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it.

Believe, Confusing, Discipline, Flaw, Tests

Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties

Sometimes, Certainty, Probability, Certainties, Close, Probabilities

Three principles - the conformability of nature to herself, the applicability of the criterion of simplicity, and the utility of certain parts of mathematics in describing physical reality - are thus consequences of the underlying law of the elementary particles and their interactions. Those three principles need not be assumed as separate metaphysical postulates. Instead, they are emergent properties of the fundamental laws of physics.

Reality, Effectiveness, Law, Nature, Interactions, Particles

My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?

Delightful, Hard Work, Insatiable, Nature, Universal, Writing

In our work, we are always between Scylla and Charybdis; we may fail to abstract enough, and miss important physics, or we may abstract too much and end up with fictitious objects in our models turning into real monsters that devour us.

Fail, Important, Miss, Missing, Real, Turning

One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that. . . a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis. . . seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

Adventure, Elegance, Science, Simplicity, Theory, Thing

I think also of my colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands, and feel that in some measure I am here as a representative of our small, informal, international fraternity.

Elementary, Fraternity, Land, Lands, Particle, Thinking

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

Quip, Dwarfs, Ifs, Seen, Further, Surrounded

Just because things get a little dingy at the subatomic level doesn't mean all bets are off.

Bets, Level, Levels, Littles, Mean, Things

Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree. Someone should be studying the whole system, however crudely that has to be done, because no gluing together of partial studies of a complex nonlinear system can give a good idea of the behavior of the whole.

Crudely, Garden, Knowledge, Linking, Race, System

If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

Alternatives, Fundamental, Giving, Histories, Look, Looks

Sustainability is living on nature's income rather than living on its capital.

Capital, Income, Living On, Sustainability

The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often

Act, Chaos, Know, Produce, Quantum, World

So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history

Copenhagen, Individualism, Individuality, Interpretation, Needs

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