Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics Paperback – October 17, 2000

I was interested in Gell-Mann since I read about his contribution to complexity and the Santa Fe institute. This part of his life, unfortunately, is only described in one of the later chapters. But it was interesting to learn about the rest of his life. I particularly enjoyed the most personal chapters, specially his childhood as a prodigy. Much of the history of the development of the Standard Theory was not interesting to me because unlike the cosmological implications of Quantum Physics, the sub-particle realm is arid an devoid of meaning unless of course, you are a physicist. Yet, I did enjoy the world of discovery, competition, cooperation, recognition and oblivion for scientists and specifically, for physicists. Johnson does a superb work of research, balance and synthesis. The only part of the book which was a bit dense, once again, was the theoretical part. It must of been hard to work with Murray and his neurotic personality just long enough to get the book done, but I wished the author had been a bit more benevolent or better yet, more dedicated to understand the psychological complexity of the character. As Gell-Mann was in his later years, I am more interested in the complexity of a person-in this case, a multi-facetic genius- than in the reductionist world of physics.

Excellent read with some observations that extend beyond particle physics to life itself. The relationship between the complexity of sub atomic particle is reflected in nature, and eventually even in politics. Hellman comes across as a polymath who in former days would have been considered a Renaissance man, only more intense and more highly focused, in short, the kind of personality needed to tie it altogether. Wtd

Good overview of the Golden Age of Particle Physics, in addition to providing a solid biography for Gell-Mann. Writing style is clear and to the point. Recommended for anyone interested in the history of modern Physics and/or the particulars of the life of intellectual outlier Murray Gell-Mann.

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.

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.

Very readable, very understandable, very informative. Johnson does just excellent work. Highly recommended for non-specialists. As a psychologist, one could say that he was rather easy on Gell-Mann as a person; on the other hand, how would I really know?