Murray Gell-Mann

Book excerpt: Murray Gell-Mann is one of the leading physicists in the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969 for his work on the SU(3) symmetry. His list of publications, albeit relatively short, is highly impressive — he has written mainly papers, which have become landmarks in physics. In 1953, Gell-Mann introduced the strangeness quantum number. In 1954, he proposed, together with F Low, the idea of the renormalization group. In 1958, Gell-Mann wrote, together with R Feynman, an important paper on the V-A theory of weak interactions. In 1961, Gell-Mann published his ideas on the SU(3) symmetry. In 1964, he proposed the quark model for hadrons. In 1971, Gell-Mann, together with H Fritzsch, proposed the color quantum number; and in 1972, the theory of QCD. These major publications of Gell-Mann are collected in this volume, thus providing physicists with easy access to the important publications of Gell-Mann.