Planck E PressCenter Articles
Gell-Mann and the Quark
Date published: 2023-05-19
Date modified: 2023-05-19
Reading time: 00:00:58
“If I have seen further than others,
it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.”
Murray Gell-Mann
From the above quote of this article, it is clear that Murray Gell-Mann was not the gentlest of creatures. What he lacked in kindness, however, he made up for in genius. Gell-Mann spoke 13 languages. No accent.
In 1963, the American physicist, who explored all corners of New York with his older brother Ben, proposed an indivisible particle that would be the elementary building block of all particles.
Gell-Mann called it a quark. Why did he do that? Just because he loved the phrase “Three quarks for Muster Mark” from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake?
No. The reason is that three is the number of quarks needed to make a proton or a neutron. It is interesting to note that the electric charges of the quarks are + 1/3 or
+ 2/3; since the sum must equal +1 (in the case of the proton) or 0 (in the case of the neutron).
In another moment of astonishment, in the obscure jungle of quantum mechanics, the quark never appears as a matter donor, although it is a fundamental building block.
If you want to know more about quantum mechanics, read The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann.
In this case, the name of the book is a thank-you to his poet friend Arthur Sze, who honored him with this haiku: “The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night.”
The best book on quantum mechanics I ever read.
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