Warehouse Stock Clearance Sale

Grab a bargain today!


Sign Up for Fishpond's Best Deals Delivered to You Every Day
Go
Strange Beauty
Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics

Rating
Format
Paperback, 464 pages
Published
United States, 1 November 2000

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, 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.


George Johnson covers science for The New York Times. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Show more

Our Price
$46.90
Ships from USA Estimated delivery date: 16th Apr - 24th Apr from USA
Free Shipping Worldwide

Buy Together
+
Buy together with The Eightfold Way at a great price!
Buy Together
$251.90
Elsewhere Price
$297.90
You Save $46.00 (15%)

Product Description

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, 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.


George Johnson covers science for The New York Times. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Show more
Product Details
EAN
9780679756880
ISBN
0679756884
Other Information
Illustrated
Dimensions
20.2 x 13.3 x 2.6 centimeters (0.44 kg)

About the Author

George Johnson covers science for The New York Times. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

"A multidimensional portrait of a brilliant but tormented man who dominated elementary physics for twenty years... An almost Shakespearean hero."--The New York Times Book Review

"Skillfully and engagingly written."--Science

Up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm aren't just states of mind: they're kinds of quarks, the mind-bending, omnipresent sub-subatomic particles co-discovered and named in the early 1960s by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann. New York Times science reporter Johnson (Fire in the Mind) has written a brisk, accessible life of the Nobel-winning scientist, who will turn 70 next month. Gell-Mann grew up poor in New York City, the son of Eastern European Jews. Still in his teens, he attended Yale and MIT, and soon afterward won notice for his work on cosmic rays. Gell-Mann followed up his insights about quarks with important work at Caltech and elsewhere on superstrings, supergravity and mathematical complexity. His adult life has had its hardships: his daughter gave much of her life to an American Stalinist fringe group, and his wife died of cancer in 1981. (He's since remarried.) Johnson makes clear that Gell-Mann's direct, sometimes arrogant manner could make him difficult to work with; admired by physicists, he failed to achieve the wider fame of his media-friendly colleague, the late Richard Feynman. While Johnson relates such troubles sympathetically, the story of Gell-Mann's life is in large part the story of his and others' researches and discoveries. Explaining difficult fields like quantum physics, Johnson uses as many analogies, and as little math, as he can, while trying always to give some picture of what scientific problems Gell-Mann and his fellow scientists solved. The result is a careful if colloquial biography, perfect for readers who aren'tÄor aren't yetÄworking scientists. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

"A multidimensional portrait of a brilliant but tormented man who dominated elementary physics for twenty years... An almost Shakespearean hero."--The New York Times Book Review

"Skillfully and engagingly written."--Science

Show more
Review this Product
Ask a Question About this Product More...
 
Look for similar items by category
Home » Books » Science » Physics
Home » Books » Science » History
Item ships from and is sold by Fishpond.com, Inc.

Back to top