Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics
by George Johnson
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With a New Afterword "Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."--Richard Feynman Acclaimed science writer George Johnson brings his formidable reporting skills to the first biography of Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant, irascible man who revolutionized modern particle physics with his models of the quark and the Eightfold Way. Born into a Jewish immigrant family on New York's East 14th Street, show more Gell-Mann's prodigious talent was evident from an early age--he entered Yale at 15, completed his Ph.D. at 21, and was soon identifying the structures of the world's smallest components and illuminating the elegant symmetries of the universe. Beautifully balanced in its portrayal of an extraordinary and difficult man, interpreting the concepts of advanced physics with scrupulous clarity and simplicity, Strange Beauty is a tour-de-force of both science writing and biography. show lessTags
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Very helpful, filled in a lot of blanks. ( Doesn't ignore any of the science )
Very helpful, filled in a lot of blanks. ( Doesn't ignore any of the science )
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Author Information
9+ Works 2,125 Members
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 show more 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. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1999
- People/Characters
- Murray Gell-Mann
- Blurbers
- Feynman, Richard
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Statistics
- Members
- 283
- Popularity
- 112,883
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.56)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 8
- ASINs
- 3
