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Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics
No contemporary scientist has done more to shape our understanding of the universe than Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winner many consider the most brilliant physicist of his generation. His discoveries of the quark and the Eightfold Way were cornerstones for all that has followed in particle physics, the effort to explain the very stuff of creation. In this first biography of Gell-Mann, George Johnson tells the story of a remarkable life.
Born on New York's Lower East Side, Gell-Mann was quickly recognized as a child prodigy. Propelled by an intense boyhood curiosity and a love for nature, he entered Yale at fifteen. By age twenty-three he had ignited a revolution, laying bare in his groundbreaking work the strange beauty of the minute particles that constitute the ultimate components of physical reality.
Particle physics is the most competitive of sports, and Johnson shows us the precocious polymath holding his own with giants like Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Richard Feynman -- Gell-Mann's favorite intellectual sparring partner and sometimes antagonistic rival. We see Gell-Mann the self-taught linguist (who couldn't resist correcting visitors on the pronunciation of their own names); Gell-Mann the birdwatcher and amateur archaeologist; Gell-Mann the Aspen socialite, world traveler, and environmental crusader.
We watch him making his scientific breakthroughs, his abrasive, competitive drive leaving behind a growing trail of enemies. The early death of his first wife and a family crisis sent him veering in new directions. Turning from the physics of simple particles, like quarks, he began exploring how complex phenomena like life can be understood scientifically.
George Johnson's informed and insightful biography goes far in helping us understand the complexities of both the man and the science in which he has loomed so large.
Born on New York's Lower East Side, Gell-Mann was quickly recognized as a child prodigy. Propelled by an intense boyhood curiosity and a love for nature, he entered Yale at fifteen. By age twenty-three he had ignited a revolution, laying bare in his groundbreaking work the strange beauty of the minute particles that constitute the ultimate components of physical reality.
Particle physics is the most competitive of sports, and Johnson shows us the precocious polymath holding his own with giants like Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Richard Feynman -- Gell-Mann's favorite intellectual sparring partner and sometimes antagonistic rival. We see Gell-Mann the self-taught linguist (who couldn't resist correcting visitors on the pronunciation of their own names); Gell-Mann the birdwatcher and amateur archaeologist; Gell-Mann the Aspen socialite, world traveler, and environmental crusader.
We watch him making his scientific breakthroughs, his abrasive, competitive drive leaving behind a growing trail of enemies. The early death of his first wife and a family crisis sent him veering in new directions. Turning from the physics of simple particles, like quarks, he began exploring how complex phenomena like life can be understood scientifically.
George Johnson's informed and insightful biography goes far in helping us understand the complexities of both the man and the science in which he has loomed so large.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
28 people are currently reading
472 people want to read
About the author
George Johnson
267 books49 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
George Johnson (born January 20, 1952) is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (2008) and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics (1999), and writes for a number of publications, including The New York Times.
He is one of the co-hosts (with science writer John Horgan) of "Science Saturday", a weekly discussion on the website Bloggingheads.tv, related to topics in science. Several prominent scientists, philosophers, and bloggers have been interviewed for the site.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
George Johnson (born January 20, 1952) is an American journalist and science writer. He is the author of a number of books, including The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (2008) and Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics (1999), and writes for a number of publications, including The New York Times.
He is one of the co-hosts (with science writer John Horgan) of "Science Saturday", a weekly discussion on the website Bloggingheads.tv, related to topics in science. Several prominent scientists, philosophers, and bloggers have been interviewed for the site.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 12, 2015
What a strange species is the particle physicist. Generally brilliant (pretty much a requirement to work in the field at all), they also seem to get big helpings of eccentricity, bluntness, and arrogance. Combine that with the intense competitiveness of the field along with the general weirdness that is modern particle theory and you get one of the more unique sub-cultures of our time. The author does an excellent job of portraying not just Gell-Mann, the subject of this biography, but also many of the people he worked with in the field and the developments in particle physics that Gell-Mann did so much to usher along. Great read.
August 28, 2025
It is surprising that a book which so strictly follows the "no equations" rule, a common editorial strategy to avoid scaring readers, miraculously evades oversimplification. Instead, every mathematical idea, simple or complex, is explained with such clarity it makes us feel the true thrill of scientific discovery. George Johnson shows the man and the particles colliding, and the result is deeply moving. Good stuff.
April 8, 2023
A joyous two-fold retelling of Gell-Mann's life and the exciting recounting of the development of the standard model from QED through to the strong force and its corresponding discoveries of quarks. Illustrates the struggles of his geniusness.
April 17, 2019
One of the best - if not the best - biographies of a physicist by a non physicist that I have read. Often the journalist gets the big picture right, but the small details wrong, because they’re not physicists they don’t recognize when they slightly misquote, for example. But Johnson gets all the physics right. A joy to read.
July 23, 2025
He's misstra know-it-all
Murray Gell-Mann is an American scientist who reshaped the field of particle physics - which is concerned with the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy - in the second half of the twentieth century by showing how the disparate members of the so-called "particle zoo" were related to each other. He did this by suggesting that each member was in turn composed of more fundamental particles (which he) called quarks. The structure these insights brought to the particle zoo - and the associated improvements in understanding - have been described as being akin to the way that the chemical elements were organized into the periodic table in the nineteenth century. Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for this work in classifying elementary particles.
This biography presents the man behind the science: the prodigy who entered Yale at 15 and received his PhD from MIT at 22, the avid observer and collector of birds, obscure languages and archaeological artefacts, the competitive intellectual who dominated his field (at one point, the organizers of a wide-ranging conference reviewing progress in particle physics were thinking of asking five or six experts in different areas to present, before realizing that Gell-Mann was the best person in each field, and asking him to talk about them all), and the concerned and eloquent conservationist who memorably criticized decision-makers as thinking "anything hard to quantify [can be] set to zero [so that] a highway can be driven straight through a neighbourhood or wilderness because there is no reliable quantitative measure of damage to set against the increased cost of running the road around the outside." [p273]
Johnson also describes the alliances and conflicts which arose between Gell-Mann and his colleagues in an intensely competitive and taxing field - including the observation that, whilst Gell-Mann's suggestion about (or discovery of) quarks ultimately proved fundamental to particle classification, they have never been directly observed (nor will ever be, according to current theory), which is one reason why he was apparently undecided for longer than his colleagues whether they really existed, or were merely an aid to calculation. The other reason for his reluctance to commit, according to Johnson, was an over-critical and pedantic father who pounced on any error or omission; it's suggested that the trepidation and quest for perfection he engendered in his son prevented him from being even more pre-eminent in his field.
This is a well-written book about a fascinating man. Although understanding his importance requires some grasp of the science and what he did to it, the author does very well to present this in layman's terms. However, I was often reminded of the reply which was suggested to Gell-Mann's colleague Richard Feynman when he was being asked too many questions by reporters after winning the Nobel Prize in 1965:
"Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize."
Originally reviewed 5 January 2016
Murray Gell-Mann is an American scientist who reshaped the field of particle physics - which is concerned with the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy - in the second half of the twentieth century by showing how the disparate members of the so-called "particle zoo" were related to each other. He did this by suggesting that each member was in turn composed of more fundamental particles (which he) called quarks. The structure these insights brought to the particle zoo - and the associated improvements in understanding - have been described as being akin to the way that the chemical elements were organized into the periodic table in the nineteenth century. Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for this work in classifying elementary particles.
This biography presents the man behind the science: the prodigy who entered Yale at 15 and received his PhD from MIT at 22, the avid observer and collector of birds, obscure languages and archaeological artefacts, the competitive intellectual who dominated his field (at one point, the organizers of a wide-ranging conference reviewing progress in particle physics were thinking of asking five or six experts in different areas to present, before realizing that Gell-Mann was the best person in each field, and asking him to talk about them all), and the concerned and eloquent conservationist who memorably criticized decision-makers as thinking "anything hard to quantify [can be] set to zero [so that] a highway can be driven straight through a neighbourhood or wilderness because there is no reliable quantitative measure of damage to set against the increased cost of running the road around the outside." [p273]
Johnson also describes the alliances and conflicts which arose between Gell-Mann and his colleagues in an intensely competitive and taxing field - including the observation that, whilst Gell-Mann's suggestion about (or discovery of) quarks ultimately proved fundamental to particle classification, they have never been directly observed (nor will ever be, according to current theory), which is one reason why he was apparently undecided for longer than his colleagues whether they really existed, or were merely an aid to calculation. The other reason for his reluctance to commit, according to Johnson, was an over-critical and pedantic father who pounced on any error or omission; it's suggested that the trepidation and quest for perfection he engendered in his son prevented him from being even more pre-eminent in his field.
This is a well-written book about a fascinating man. Although understanding his importance requires some grasp of the science and what he did to it, the author does very well to present this in layman's terms. However, I was often reminded of the reply which was suggested to Gell-Mann's colleague Richard Feynman when he was being asked too many questions by reporters after winning the Nobel Prize in 1965:
"Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize."
Originally reviewed 5 January 2016
December 3, 2022
I have become increasingly fascinated over the years with the history of science and have read a number of biographies, including James Gleick's 'Genius' on Richard Feynman, one of Gell-Mann's contemporaries and competitors actually. I really had not heard of Gell-Mann but he is a towering figure as it turns out, certainly on a par with Feynman in that generation of physicists. By this biography Gell-Mann is not a guy you 'like', generally thin-skinned, arrogant and vindictive in fact. Does that detract from his accomplishments? He was also polymath of sorts if that is possible in our information saturated time. Yet his brilliance is unquestioned, the classic child prodigy with a Yale degree by about age 18 in 1948. He worked under the great Enrico Fermi for a period before ending up at CalTech along with Feynman where he remained for many years. He is credited with 'discovering' the quark or least least coining the phrase from a line in James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake ("Three quarks for Muster Mark"). Others may have had equally valid claims to the concept (namely George Zweig) but Gell-Mann was loathe to share the credit. Yet even Gell-Mann basically did not believe it was anything but a mathematical artifact until it was apparently 'seen' at the Stanford linear accelerator in 1968. He was also one of the developers of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and physics model called the Eight-fold Way. But any attempt of my own to summarize his work or this period in particle physics would be less than edifying. Suffice to say the glossary was one of the most useful I have had in any book. When you get over myriad particles--neutrinos, positrons, baryons, hadrons, muons, fermions, bosons and their strangeness, charges, colors, flavors and spin your own head will literally be spinning. All of it progress on the road to 'Unification' we are told and he barely delves into strings, superstrings, branes, membranes, multiverses and all that followed. Still it a really good read about a fascinating time and a gifted scientist who was in the thick of it all.
October 18, 2025
This is a biography of Murray Gell-Mann one of our best theoretical physicists. His claim to fame was categorizing the confusing number of elementary particles discovered during quantum mechanics hey day around 1940s to 1980s. He was rearded for the Nobel for his efforts.
He discovered that any particular particle had diversity i.e. just as humans are all similar but not the same. Furthermore, each grouping seem to obey a conversation law particular to the group e.g. certain groups had to obey 'conservation of net charge - before an event summed charges must equal the after sum. So each particle had characteristics of 'color','strangeness','flavor' and so forth. Strangeness referred to the longer-lasting life of some unstable particles that theoretically should have decayed sooner into other particles.
Gell-mann had many interests outside of Physics. He was an expert ornithologist, patron of rare artifacts (lifelong interest in archaeology), on Smithsonian Ruling board, on Aspen committee for disarmament to name a few. He was well-read in literature and had a love of poetry.
Very good read for those who know some layman physics and like to read bio's about scientists.
Also, involved in the scientific community would find his story a good read.
He discovered that any particular particle had diversity i.e. just as humans are all similar but not the same. Furthermore, each grouping seem to obey a conversation law particular to the group e.g. certain groups had to obey 'conservation of net charge - before an event summed charges must equal the after sum. So each particle had characteristics of 'color','strangeness','flavor' and so forth. Strangeness referred to the longer-lasting life of some unstable particles that theoretically should have decayed sooner into other particles.
Gell-mann had many interests outside of Physics. He was an expert ornithologist, patron of rare artifacts (lifelong interest in archaeology), on Smithsonian Ruling board, on Aspen committee for disarmament to name a few. He was well-read in literature and had a love of poetry.
Very good read for those who know some layman physics and like to read bio's about scientists.
Also, involved in the scientific community would find his story a good read.
August 6, 2017
Johnson’s biography of physicist Murray Gell-Mann is an excellent scientific biography that explains the science deeply enough to be understandable – one gets a good sense of the problems that Gell-Mann and others were tackling and the challenges they faced in solving these problems – but not so densely as to be unintelligible. The book is also very good in portraying science as a meandering, stumbling, inexact process with dead-ends and discoveries that were almost made and not as a clean straight line of progress from point A to point B. Johnson also captures the competitive nature of science, the personalities (Feynman, Fermi, Schwinger, Pais, and others) and the conflicts involved among these individuals. The book also does a good job of capturing the complexities of Gell-Mann, his personal strengths and weaknesses and how these impacted his science as well as how his past influenced the eccentric, blunt, often arrogant, and sometimes even hesitant individual that he became.
August 29, 2021
This is an excellent book which recounts the life of physicist Murray Gell-Mann along with the history of particle physics. The author does a great job in describing the interesting personality and the events in the life of this amazing physicist. It also digs into the details and subtleties of this complex area of physics, deftly explaining the difficult aspects in this field. The book contains many interesting anecdotes about Gell-Mann and the people he was associated with, including physicists Viktor Weisskopf, Richard Feynman, and Julian Schwinger, to name a few. I strongly recommend this book for an insightful view into the mind of a brilliant physicist and for a superb overview of particle physics.
October 24, 2018
After hearing Gell-Mann interviewed on youtube, I became curious about him. This book is an excellent place to learn not only about Gell-Mann, but the exciting developments that he participated and about various other people involved in twentieth century physics. While Johnson explains theories as well as could be expected, it would have helped if I had a better understanding of the physics before reading this book. I was provoked by the book to start learning about the history of physics.
August 26, 2023
Complicated but engrossing
I guess it's impossible to do biographic justice to someone like Gell-Mann without explaining his physics, but it ended up a bit overwhelming. Nonetheless, a tour de force!
I guess it's impossible to do biographic justice to someone like Gell-Mann without explaining his physics, but it ended up a bit overwhelming. Nonetheless, a tour de force!
July 3, 2023
For a book that covers both Gell-Mann and particle physics, it is very readable. I was lost at times in the physics, but the biography would start again and carry me through. Fascinating character.
March 14, 2025
Fantastic.
July 5, 2020
Interesting biography of an interesting character. Never in danger of becoming hagiography, it captures Gell-Mann's natural genius and enthusiasm for everything, alongside his self-promotion, lack of focus and tendency to bear a grudge.
Possibly too much science for the complete amateur and not enough for the scientist, but that can easily be skipped over without losing the picture of the man.
Possibly too much science for the complete amateur and not enough for the scientist, but that can easily be skipped over without losing the picture of the man.
August 3, 2022
Data swirls around like electrons as I read. My brain starts counting each time i see the words Quark, proton, pion, lambda, photon... 116! 327! 208! I'm a grown-up child prodigy! Those terms will become like family to you while you read about the wonderful world of physics, and some of the politics associated with it.
The book begins with a quote from Francis Bacon:
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
This quote feels like a disclaimer for what is to come.
What takes place over the course of Murray Gell-Manns life and career can be summed up (for the sake of this review) as: he had a tough childhood with his father and one of the hardest challenges in his life was finishing
writing his own book. He had terrible writer's block and was a perfectionist.
Someone may ask themselves after reading this, "if this smart@ss can't even figure out how to be nice, what chance do I have?" Lol.
In addition, Gell-Mann is obsessed with birds and loves bird watching. (Note: Gell-Mann is alive at the time this review was written.)
In conclusion, how do I feel after reading 353 pages and endless explanations of particle physics? Glad. Glad over what, I'm not quite sure, but this question near the end of the book captures my sentiment: "How much of who we are is innate, genetic, like the truth of the existence of the laws of physics... and how much is the result of just accidents throughout history?"
Physics doesn't really completely sum up the "why" to the reason we have a human experience anymore than a feeling does.
The beauty of our lives is simplistic, and beyond that, complexity arises.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the basics of particle physics, and its history over the last century, or someone who enjoys biographies involving science.
Enjoy!
The book begins with a quote from Francis Bacon:
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
This quote feels like a disclaimer for what is to come.
What takes place over the course of Murray Gell-Manns life and career can be summed up (for the sake of this review) as: he had a tough childhood with his father and one of the hardest challenges in his life was finishing
writing his own book. He had terrible writer's block and was a perfectionist.
Someone may ask themselves after reading this, "if this smart@ss can't even figure out how to be nice, what chance do I have?" Lol.
In addition, Gell-Mann is obsessed with birds and loves bird watching. (Note: Gell-Mann is alive at the time this review was written.)
In conclusion, how do I feel after reading 353 pages and endless explanations of particle physics? Glad. Glad over what, I'm not quite sure, but this question near the end of the book captures my sentiment: "How much of who we are is innate, genetic, like the truth of the existence of the laws of physics... and how much is the result of just accidents throughout history?"
Physics doesn't really completely sum up the "why" to the reason we have a human experience anymore than a feeling does.
The beauty of our lives is simplistic, and beyond that, complexity arises.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the basics of particle physics, and its history over the last century, or someone who enjoys biographies involving science.
Enjoy!
June 6, 2015
Murray Gell-Mann won a Nobel prize in physics. He and Richard Feynman were arguably the two greatest physicists of the 2nd half of the 20th century. They were also colleagues, friends and rivals at Caltech.
Gell-Mann is also an expert on many other topics: Linguistics, anthropology, birds, complexity and more.
And he is a perfectionist, a procrastinator, a show-off; he has a need to prove that he knows more than you (and he does know more than you). He could be kind and charming to graduate students and others who he did not see as a threat, but could be astoundingly rude to colleagues.
This book concentrates on his physics, but does not ignore the rest of this complex man's life.
Gell-Mann is also an expert on many other topics: Linguistics, anthropology, birds, complexity and more.
And he is a perfectionist, a procrastinator, a show-off; he has a need to prove that he knows more than you (and he does know more than you). He could be kind and charming to graduate students and others who he did not see as a threat, but could be astoundingly rude to colleagues.
This book concentrates on his physics, but does not ignore the rest of this complex man's life.
January 11, 2011
"Ha cinque cervelli, ognuno più intelligente del tuo". Così qualcuno definiva Murray Gell-Mann, gigante della fisica delle particelle pre-modello standard. E' sempre stato il primo della classe con poco sforzo, distratto da tanti interessi e capace di assorbire informazioni continuamente. Vince il Nobel a circa 40 anni, ora ne ha quasi 80. La biografia lo accompagna dalla nascita ai 70 anni, raccontando l'origine del suo blocco da scrittore e del suo terrore di sbagliare, la difficile vita in famiglia e i matrimoni, le frizioni con i colleghi e l'introduzione di definizioni azzeccate.
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July 12, 2016Many readers will know that Gell-Mann is a pioneer in complexity science and complex adaptive systems: his work provides the scientific basis for much of the other complexity-related work that we admire. We should all know about him and his work.
February 28, 2008
Beautiful and compelling look at Murray Gell-Mann's life and his discovery of the "Strange Beauty" of the quark.
October 5, 2010
Very helpful, filled in a lot of blanks. ( Doesn't ignore any of the science )
January 7, 2012
Strange Beauty is Interesting portrait of a very complex man. His impact on the world of physics was huge.
April 18, 2014
A very interesting portrait of Murray Gell-Mann. I lerant a lot of things about the science he studied and how he related to his world.
September 13, 2015
An excellent and very readable biography of the Nobel prizewinning physicist, very much in the mould of James Gleick's "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman".
May 29, 2011
Strangely beautiful and beautifully strange life story of a rare boy genius.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews