Quark and Murray Gell-Mann, a Renaissance man in science

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) began to have a weekly column of “Week in Words” of late; one of the words on the list of the weekend of January 21 was “quark” (see photo right).   

I knew it came from the physicist Murray Gell-Mann who is also an acclaimed linguist and can read and speak many (at least 6 or 7) languages.  His 1969 Nobel Lecture is somehow not available on the nobel.com site, but one can listen an interview that took place in 2001, in which he did say it came from James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake”.  Watch this interview video, you’ll know why he is on my list of Renaissance men/women in science.

http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=386

A letter-to-editor at WSJ today (January 30, see photo below) prompted me to write this post.  I often said letter-to-editor at times outdid the original article it comments, and this is an example.   

Murray Gell-Mann

The letter writer traced the word ‘quark’ back to Goethe’s “Faust” and he did it splendidly.  Richard Feynman once picked up “Faust” and put it down saying it didn’t make sense to him.  Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann (at Caltech) in 1958 greatly revised Fermi’s theory (which is not the topic of interest in this writing).  I just want to say great scientists come in many faces.  Feynman couldn’t tolerate any non-science/math reading; he was thrilled when he learned that the Descriptive Astronomy can be considered a required humanity course when he was an undergraduate at MIT.  Feynman writes very well in his unique style.  And yet Gell-Mann is an avid James Joyce reader.  I once checked out “Finnegan’s Wake” from library and simply couldn’t read it. “It didn't make sense to me.”


Many years ago Janice brought to my attention of Alan Lightman’s “The Discoveries”; I spotted it at Half Price Books a year or two ago and gladly paid $9.98 for the hard-cover book, quite a bargain.  The Chapter 21 is “Quarks: A tiniest essence of matter”.  I better not go there lest this post would be too dry and unreadable.