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2 results

Discovering Quarks
  • Remembering Feynman, Gell-Mann, and Tollestrup
  • George Zweig
  • Published online:
    06 November 2025
    Print publication:
    16 October 2025
  • This book describes the development of our understanding of the strong interactions in particle physics, through its competing ideas and personalities, its false starts, blind alleys, and moments of glory – culminating with the author's discovery of quarks, real particles living in a deeper layer of reality. How were quarks discovered, what did physicists think they were, and what did they turn out to be? These questions are answered through a collection of personal remembrances. The focus is on the reality of quarks, and why that reality made them so difficult to accept. How Feynman and Gell-Mann practiced physics, with their contrasting styles and motivations, presented different obstacles to accepting this reality. And how was the author, as a graduate student, able to imagine their existence, and act on it? Science buffs, students, and experts alike will find much here to pique their interest and learn about quarks along the way.

  • 5 - Murray Gell-Mann

  • George Zweig, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Book:
    Discovering Quarks
    Published online:
    06 November 2025
    Print publication:
    16 October 2025, pp 66-86

  • Summary

    Chapter 5 focuses on Murray Gell-Mann who dominated particle physics for more than a decade starting in the mid-1950s. His perspective, style, and major contributions to physics, while I knew him, are described. A comparison of Feynman and Gell-Mann’s views on how to practice physics, and what they valued concludes this chapter.

    A succession of toy field theories of increasing generality are described, the final one, missing all strong interactions, is based on mathematical quarks from which equal-time commutation relations of the weak and electromagnetic currents are abstracted. The Eightfold way and the Gell-Mann—Okubo mass formula are discussed, and Gell-Mann’s view of quarks is described in some detail. Examples of a darker side -- his pattern of inadequate attribution, that I only fully realized while writing this book -- are also given.