Customer Reviews

Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics

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Several years ago I was having lunch with Murray Gell-Mann. He lamented that one day a biography of him would appear and no doubt it would be written by a fool who would get it all wrong.

This month the biography of Murray Gell-Mann, arguably the most influential physicist of the latter part of the twentieth century appeared, but it was neither written by a fool nor was it all wrong.

A few years back, I read James Gleick's celebrated biography of Richard Feynman (Genius), the other great physicist of the latter part of the twentieth century, and Gell-Mann's closest rival and colleague. I felt that it suffered greatly from a problem that faces many biographers, that is, writing about someone you have never met. Gleick never met Feynman, much less knew him, and therefore it provided a distorted picture of the man. I never felt that Feynman's personality and thought process came through. Many of Feynman's closest intimates and family felt the same way and were more than disappointed by the biography.

In contrast, when I read George Johnson's recent biography of Murray Gell-Mann (Strange Beauty), I couldn't help thinking, "That's Murray!" "Yes, that's Murray!" (Recently I spoke with some close friends of Gell-Mann who felt the same way.) Author Johnson did have the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time with Gell-Mann and that certainly comes through. To a large degree you will get a strong sense of what Gell-Mann's personality is like. He can be extremely formidable, sarcastic with distinguished rivals as well as fools (he does not suffer fools gladly) and arrogant (adapting a phrase from Issac Newton, he once said, the reason I can see further than others is because I am surrounded by dwarfs).

Yet, as Johnson points out, Gell-Mann is also a man who is also continually tormented by his own insecurities. Here is a man who has every reason to boast, and should not be insecure about his achievements. His contributions to theoretical physics during the second part of the twentieth century are legendary and perhaps unrivaled. Feynman paid Gell-Mann the ultimate complement after Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969, "Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."

The complex relationship between these two intellectual giants of physics, Gell-Mann and Feynman, warrants discussion. The two were close colleagues at the California Institute of Technology for almost thirty years. They started as close friends and then drifted apart. In this one area, I felt that Johnson did not fully understand the complex relationship and dynamic between the two men, both of whom I got the chance to know fairly well. One does get some brief glimpses of Gell-Mann's frustrations of their relationship, but one does not have any insight into Feynman's position. The author permits a treatment of Feynman that comes across a bit harsh and unsympathetic. This may be due to the fact that Johnson was only exposed to Gell-Mann's constant harping about Feynman.

There is another aspect of Gell-Mann's character, which perhaps does not come across enough in this fine book. Gell-Mann can be a very warm, charming and tremendously giving person to his friends and others in need of help. He is also extremely passionate about making the world a better place, by spending an enormous amount of his time involved in various important educational and environmental issues. In spite of Gell-Mann's apparent social lapses, he has done a great deal in a positive way for the world and for the friends who surround him.

It would be impossible to author a biography of Gell-Mann without discussing the many contributions he has made to the world of theoretical physics. In this regard, without reference to a single mathematical equation, Johnson has done an extremely admirable job for the interested reader. Gell-Mann's physics and insight come through in an extremely readable way without the sort of egregious errors that are often made when scientific popularizations distill complicated scientific thought. I couldn't find any fault with the scientific issues that were being discussed.

What does Gell-Mann think of the book? In typical Gell-Mann fashion, he stated to me, "There's a mistake on every page." Nevertheless, the "mistakes" that he pointed out were of a rather trivial nature and do not detract from the overall picture of the man and his accomplishments. In conclusion, this is an immensely readable and enjoyable book. I couldn't put it down, nor could any of Gell-Mann's close friends who spoke to me about it! It's really great! Full of insight, fun, drama, and everything else you could wish for in a biography of a truly remarkable man, who has contributed to our understanding of the universe in a very fundamental way.

Strange Beauty is a consummate piece of popular science writing that captivates the reader with tales of a fascinating 20th century particle physicist, but without letting the human narrative occlude the science itself. This is no easy accomplishment; often popular accounts of science veer too far into the cult of personality, making their heroes appear to be larger than life and their science to be some kind of high melodrama. George Johnson's storytelling helps us to know the flawed genius of Murray Gell-Mann and to care about him as a lead character. We also care about the knowledge that he and his colleagues are uncovering about the ephemeral wisps of particle reality that give rise to the material world. Gell-Mann comes off in this book as a devoted theorist and a passionate thinker, but also as a real human being. Johnson's portrayal is a more even-handed and fair treatment of Gell-Mann than he has received in other popular writings. The search for new particles reads like a detective story, but not in an affected style. The reader may not fully grasp each stage of the particle trail--a rarefied world that is difficult even for experts to feel at home in. But the particle search that Johnson unfolds makes it clear how mathematical constructs give rise to funny sounding names like "quarks," which then lead researchers on a hunt to find them. Twentieth-century particle physics is strikingly close to Platonic philosophy, which suggests that the foundations of reality can never be known, but only surmised from shadows. Yet, even as Strange Beauty is eliciting all of these insights from the reader, it does so while still managing to to be a ripping good story.

George Johnson's bio of Murray Gell-Mann is an excellent read for anyone intersted in what has been transpiring in post WWII Particle Physics. While providing a long overdue biography of one of the most important physicists of the century, it also has very lucid explanations of the complex theories that Gell-Mann and his cohorts have devised. The only caveat for the potential reader is to be aware that these concepts, while very well explained, are not easy going without some degree of patience and some high school level (or better) physics. The reader can choose to ignore this material and stick with the biographical portion, but it is well worth the effort to understand the clear discussion. In short, an excellent read for anyone intersted in contemporary physics and its practioners.

I enjoyed this book very much. Gell-Mann's contribution to quantum physics is explained well (to the extent that anyone can explain that subject). The author also did an excellent job of exploring Gell-Mann's complex personality and his (often stormy) relationships with other great physicists of the second half of the 20th century. The author's personal relationship with his subject (getting permission to do a biography, getting access to Gell-Mann) is an entertaining sub-theme to the book. My main disappointment with the book (and perhaps this unfair, since the author's subject is Gell-Mann, afterall) is that there is not enough about the interplay between Gell-Mann and his equally great contemporary at Cal Tech--Richard Feynman.

All in all, a well written and enjoyable book.

Given his status in the pantheon of physicists, one might expect Strange Beauty to be a standard paean to Murray Gell-Mann's brilliance. Instead, George Johnson tells a much deeper story of a complicated man, his accomplishments, and his foibles. In 1994, I had eagerly awaited Gell-Mann's own book, The Quark and the Jaguar. I found it nearly unreadable. I was terribly disappointed, as I was very interested in a man who could simultaneously be held in such high regard by both reductionists (as a leading particle physicist) and fans of complexity sciences and emergence (as a co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute). Armed with Johnson's insights, I'm ready to try Gell-Mann's book again.

I'd also recommend Strange Beauty to anyone interested in the process of innovation. It's difficult to imagine a more competitive environment for pure creativity than that characterizing particle physics during much of this century. I took odd comfort from the fact that even among Nobel Prize winners, the process of innovation is marked by redundancy, countless dead ends, internecine struggle, pettiness, and seemingly sudden breakthroughs. Maybe we mere mortals need not be too discouraged when we find the same during our own efforts.

As a former classics student I like to learn that Truth and Beauty have not left the scene. In Strange Beauty we learn that particle physicists, like Plato, consider the two inseparable. And if all ugliness is banned as untrue then surely the universe that physics builds is one that we can look upon and say that it is good? (The love of symmetry, though, which is -- the psychologists tell us -- more a masculine than a feminine passion, may be blocking the view. My guess is that when women begin to find their place in science the world will turn out to be much more lopsided than the current masters allow it to be.)

Strange Beauty offers a sympathetic but not uncritical analysis of the life of one temperamental genius. It is also masterfully composed, with an understated elegance not often encountered. The science in this book is sometimes difficult for the non-scientist but never opaque -- laid out so clearly, in fact, that it holds its own even against my artist's mind. I feel inclined, as I have after reading each one of Johnson's books, to start again at the beginning so as to discover what I may have missed while gliding effortlessly on the tide of his words.

a wonderful book. george johnson not only builds a convincing portrait of murray gell-mann himself, who is fascinating if a little repulsive, but makes particle physics comprehensible to a math dunce like me. The writing is clear and vivid and intelligent, and his characterization of gell-mann himself subtle and complex and convincing.

Personally, I purchased this bio of Gell-Mann out of curiosity. It is always a pleasure for me to read about the interesting characters that produced our modern understanding of the universe, from large-scale to small, and I've always read interesting tidbits about Gell-Mann and stories of his (in)famous personality... but never an in-depth biography that would give a fuller picture of the man and the entire spectrum of his scientific work and outside interests. Well, look no further, this excellent bio filled the bill.

To say that author George Johnson (an accomplished science writer) did a great job capturing Gell-Mann's personality and scientific world would be an understatement. The book is as thorough a treatment that could be desired on a popular level, successfully capturing this multi-faceted man and his complex world of fundamental physics, as well as his interaction with other complex characters who choose particle physics for a career :-).

Gell-Mann wasn't just a particle physicist; his interests were actually very broad and included a fascination with the diversity of biological eco-systems on up to exploring possible rigorous methodologies for the social sciences (especially psychology). Of course, his interest in complex systems plays a big part in all of these areas. Not to mention, Gell-Mann was fascinated by various languages and cultures around the world (the more obscure, the better), in part because of his life-long fascination with diversity. So we see a man with boundless curiosity. Given his enormous intellect, one might expect these varied interests would be the case anyway, but sometimes scientists get locked into a particular mentality and can't seem to get out of a box. Gell-Mann definitely got out of the box.

I learned many new insights about Gell-Mann here. For one thing, Gell-Mann seemed to struggle with the ontological status of his "quark" model, not quite getting to the point of believing quarks were any more than a mathematical construction. While many other physicists took his quark model at face value, as apparently actually being physical sub-components of particles (which was later shown experimentally), Gell-Mann seemed to hesitate on this score. Revealed here, perhaps, was a continuing fear of being "wrong" on a particular topic, which to Gell-Mann's rather anal personality was a horror in itself :-).
When it was shown that quarks were actually concrete but "confined", Gell-Mann quickly changed his tune on their "imaginary" status, saying all along he had meant "confined". An amusing insight into his need to always be right, I guess... :-)

Also interesting was reading about his disagreements with theoretical biologist/fellow Santa-Fe member Stuart Kauffman. While Gell-Mann seemed to clearly realize the limits of a strictly reductionist approach to phenomena, he nevertheless disapproved of Kauffman and others always looking for "something new" as necessary for studying emergent properties of a system. Gell-Mann's own background as a particle physicist seemed to be a firm base from which to view complexity, without necessarily trying to evoke "new laws".

Gell-Mann's famous ego-battles with Richard Feynman are recounted fully here too. Here we have perhaps the two greatest physicists of their generation, and perhaps the two largest egos :-). Another reviewer commented how author George Johnson seems to paint an unflattering portrait of Feynman, which I didn't personally see. Johnson sees in Feynman a carefully-orchestrated persona to the public as a wild and crazy guy...which seems to be how Gell-Mann saw Feynman too. There is little argument Feynman knew how to play up to the media; he strikes me as a character that knew full well how to milk his public image to get press coverage. Gell-Mann was not nearly the extroverted showman that Feynman was, so naturally we see some resentment here. At any rate, in the book you can read all about the competition between these two intellectual giants, with egos to match.

Back to our book. Highly recommended science writing...five stars. I believe laypeople everywhere should be interested in how science developed in the 20th century onward as part of one's intellectual education. It's hard to call oneself "educated" if one remains ignorant of many of the basic achievements of modern science, but that's just me.
Bios of great scientists like Gell-Mann are therefore always welcome.

Quirks and all (I'll resist a play on "quirk", although Gell-Mann would no doubt look up the etymology and set me straight), these men's work produced something of enormous benefit to mankind.

Strange Beauty is a consummate piece of popular science writing that captivates the reader with tales of a fascinating 20th century particle physicist, but without letting the human narrative occlude the science itself. This is no easy accomplishment; often popular accounts of science veer too far into the cult of personality, making their heroes appear to be larger than life and their science to be some kind of high melodrama. George Johnson's storytelling helps us to know the flawed genius of Murray Gell-Mann and to care about him as a lead character. We also care about the knowledge that he and his colleagues are uncovering about the ephemeral wisps of particle reality that give rise to the material world. Gell-Mann comes off in this book as a devoted theorist and a passionate thinker, but also as a real human being. Johnson's portrayal is a more even-handed and fair treatment of Gell-Mann than he has received in other popular writings. The search for new particles reads like a detective story, but not in an affected style. The reader may not fully grasp each stage of the particle trail--a rarefied world that is difficult even for experts to feel at home in. But the particle search that Johnson unfolds makes it clear how mathematical constructs give rise to funny sounding names like "quarks," which then lead researchers on a hunt to find them. Twentieth-century particle physics is strikingly close to Platonic philosophy, which suggests that the foundations of reality can never be known, but only surmised from shadows. Yet, even as Strange Beauty is eliciting all of these insights from the reader, it does so while still managing to to be a ripping good story.

Keeping us focused on what it takes to make great physics, and a great physicist, is more important today than ever. Physics needs money, mostly from us as taxpayers, and Johnson shows what we get for this. Strange Beauty reminds us too that leadership in science does not come at the wave of a wand. It requires infrastructure and endless patience.