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

Johnson, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1947864491 ISBN 13: 9781947864498

Publisher: SFI Press, 2023

Synopsis

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.

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. This updated edition, with a new foreword by Douglas Hofstadter, includes reflections on the final years of Gell-Mann’s life and his influence on the Santa Fe Institute.

ACCLAIM FOR GEORGE JOHNSON’S Strange Beauty

If biography were diving, the brilliant and irascible Murray Gell-Mann (alive!) would have to be something like a reverse three-and-a-half somersault half-twist from the pike position. George Johnson has nailed this one. Strange Beauty is complex, mind-expanding, beautiful, and true. —JAMES GLEICK

Searingly eloquent. —SUNDAY TIMES (LONDON) BOOKS OF THE YEAR

A masterpiece of scientific explication for the layman. . . . Science writing doesn’t get much better than this. —PHILIP ANDERSON, TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT

Brings together an irresistible subject-the difficult polymath Murray Gell-Mann-and a talented writer who spins an enthralling tale out of the kind of esoteric physics that generally flies right over our heads. Johnson is one of the best science journalists writing today . . . . This is his most ambitious project yet— communicating the fascination of a kind of science that only an elite of superbright people fully understands. He succeeds brilliantly. —CHET RAYMO, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

We gain a front-row seat at an exhilarating intellectual demonstration. . . . The elegance of Johnson’s writing matches the beauty of Gell-Mann’s discoveries. —MARCIA BARTUSIAK, THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

Johnson, an award-winning science writer, paints a fascinating portrait of this brilliant, complicated, sometimes insecure and often exasperating man. —MARCUS CHOWN, NEW SCIENTIST

A riveting read for anybody interested in the history and sociology of late-twentieth-century science.” —NATURE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE: A lovely book and fascinating story that makes the concepts of quantum physics understandable. Anyone could read it and be utterly mesmerised.

Edition details

• Publisher: SFI Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1947864491
• ISBN 13: 9781947864498
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608