Strange Beauty - by George Johnson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Strange Beauty" is the first biography of Novel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann--arguably the most brilliant physicist of his generation--whose discovery of quarks and contributions to the field of complexity have radically changed our understanding of the world. of photos.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

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