| 1 | Name: | Dr. Murray Gell-Mann | |
| Institution: | Santa Fe Institute & California Institute of Technology | ||
| Year Elected: | 1993 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 106. Physics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1929 | ||
| Death Date: | May 24, 2019 | ||
Murray Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Professor Gell-Mann's "eightfold way" theory brought order to the chaos created by the discovery of some 100 particles in the atom's nucleus, then he found that all of those particles, including the neutron and proton, are composed of fundamental building blocks that he named "quarks." The quarks are permanently confined by forces coming from the exchange of "gluons." He and others later constructed the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons, called "quantum chromodynamics," which seems to account for all the nuclear particles and their strong interactions. Besides being a Nobel laureate, Professor Gell-Mann received the Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Research Corporation Award, and the John J. Carty medal of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Gell-Mann was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal in 2005. In 1988 he was listed on the United Nations Environmental Program Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement (the Global 500). Professor Gell-Mann was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until 1993. He was a director of the J.D. and C.T. MacArthur Foundation from 1979-2002. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Gell-Mann served on the board of the Wildlife Conservation Society, was a Citizen Regent of the Smithsonian (1974-88), served on the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1994-2001), and was a member of the Board of Directors of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Although he was a theoretical physicist, Professor Gell-Mann's interests extended to many other subjects, including natural history, historical linguistics, archaeology, history, depth psychology, and creative thinking, all subjects connected with biological evolution, cultural evolution, and learning and thinking. He felt deep concern about policy matters related to world environmental quality (including conservation of biological diversity), restraint in population growth, sustainable economic development, and stability of the world political system. His later research at the Santa Fe Institute focused on the subject of complex adaptive systems, which brings all these areas of study together. He was also interested in how knowledge and understanding are to be extracted from the welter of "information" that can now be transmitted and stored as a result of the digital revolution. He was author of the popular science book The Quark and the Jaguar, Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. Murray Gell-Mann died May 24, 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 89. | |||