Murray Gell-Mann
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Murray Gell-Mann
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1969
Born: 15 September 1929, New York, NY, USA
Died: 24 May 2019, Santa Fe, NM, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA
Prize motivation: “for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions”
Prize share: 1/1
Work
During the 1950s and 1960s, new accelerators and apparatuses helped identify many new elementary particles. In theoretical works from the same period, Murray Gell-Mann classified particles and their interactions. He proposed that observed particles are in fact composite, that is, comprised of smaller building blocks called quarks. According to this theory, as-yet-undiscovered particles should exist. When these were later found in experiments, the theory was accepted.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
