SFI Distinguished Professor Murray Gell-Mann was honored at Caltech in December during an event celebrating “50 years of the quark.”
While at Caltech in the 1950s and 60s, Gell-Mann theorized the existence of and helped establish the characteristics of sub-atomic particles he named quarks. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for his work on the theory of elementary particles.
Several science writers took the opportunity to mark some of Gell-Mann's contributions and a few of their interactions with him.
Watch the presentations honoring Gell-Mann on YouTube
Gell-Mann is a co-founder, Life Trustee, member of the Science Board, and Distinguished Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute.
More about the event at Caltech
Read Phys.org's acknowledgement of Murray Gell-Mann's 1964 proposal of a theory of the existence of the quark (January 20, 2014)
Read science writer John Horgan's post in Scientific American (December 17, 2013)
Read science writer George Johnson's post in Discover magazine about Gell-Mann and science journalists (December 11, 2013)
Read Johnson's post in Discover about Gell-Mann and errors (December 12, 2013)
Read Johnson's post in Discover about Gell-Mann's particle physics contributions (December 15, 2013)