
Murray Gell-Mann Has Died - sajid
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/obituaries/murray-gell-mann-died-.html
======
hhs
"The first thing that makes me respect Murray is that unlike all his
contemporaries, including Feynman, Weinberg, Hawking, and all the other
particle physicists, he saw that complexity is the next big problem. The kind
of breakthroughs he made in the early 1960s in terms of impact on the world of
science are not going to get made in that domain, they are going to get made
in this domain. Murray recognized that, and has become more than just
conversant with what's going on and with what the problems are." \- J. Doyne
Farmer [0].

Last month, there was a neat discussion of Murray Gell-Man's idea on plectics:
the study of simplicity and complexity [1]. He definitely influenced my views
on systems theory. Thank you and rest in peace.

[0]: [https://www.edge.org/conversation/murray_gell_mann-
chapter-1...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/murray_gell_mann-
chapter-19-plectics).

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760682).

~~~
auntienomen
I'm willing to bet that the Gelllman Low equation outshines his other work in
the long term.

------
dannylandau
These video series with Gell-Mann are super interesting in my opinion --
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LU6kbao3vo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LU6kbao3vo)

------
org3432
He gave an amusing talk at Google in 2007 about creativity[0], where I thought
he talked about one of the important things in science is actually believing
the data since it seems so outlandish. I thought it was in this talk, but
skimming the video I can't seem to find it. The talk is quite amusing
regardless.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M2l-jzRG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M2l-jzRG8)

------
primodemus
NYT obituary: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/obituaries/murray-gell-
ma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/obituaries/murray-gell-mann-
died-.html)

------
andybak
Am I right in thinking he named the Quark - he was reading Finnigan's Wake at
the time.

I wonder if he finished it...

------
rdiddly
Embarrassing confession: For 20 years thanks to my shallow physics education
(i.e. for engineering) I always thought Gell and Mann were two people, like
Meyers and Briggs, and (appropriately) Dunning and Kruger.

------
acjohnson55
A true giant. The concept of quarks really captured my mind as a kid. It was
one of the first things that I recall that made me realize there was a whole
world of knowledge beyond my basic textbooks.

------
vbuwivbiu
his book "The Quark and the Jaguar" included a bit about the game Oware which
is highly recommended

~~~
agumonkey
[https://archive.org/details/MurrayGellMannTheQuarkAndTheJagu...](https://archive.org/details/MurrayGellMannTheQuarkAndTheJaguarAdventuresInTheSimpleAndTheComplex1995St.MartinsGriffin.compressed)

~~~
ignoranceprior
How is this allowed on the Internet Archive? It was only published in the 90s,
it is still under copyright. I thought the Internet Archive's publicly
accessible book collection was supposed to only include content in the public
domain (or otherwise freely licensed).

~~~
8bitsrule
IA began to put up out-of-print items some time ago (old LPs for example). I'd
guess that many books still under technical copyright can only be reprinted in
small quantities (probably at a loss) and be hard to find. Seems a reasonable
'gentleman's agreement' that's working out for IA.

------
earnubs
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

------
I_complete_me
A great man has left us. RIP.

~~~
return1
I wonder how many such monumental "brand name" physicists are still alive.

~~~
gjm11
We still have Witten, Weinberg, 't Hooft, Yang&Lee. Also Nobelists but (in my
utterly prejudiced view) less monumental: Rubbia, Glashow, Wilczek, Thorne.
Not Nobelists but arguably in the monumental category: Dyson, maybe Penrose.

~~~
dmurray
For "brand recognition" surely Peter Higgs is at the top, along with maybe
Dyson. I'm not qualified to opine on how his work compares to the others.

~~~
evanb
I don't think Higgs is really widely considered monumental in the same was as
those other people. He had one good idea (at essentially the same time as
Brout, Englert, Kibble, ...) which got his name attached. But I am a
professional physicist and know none of his other work, in contrast to Dyson,
Weinberg, Witten, t' Hooft, ...

~~~
graphpapa
Higgs is absolutely a more familiar name than the others, and stain too,
whether you think his contributions were proportional to that recognition or
not

~~~
evanb
That he has greater name recognition amongst lay people doesn't make him a
monumental physicist.

------
grayed-down
A quarky guy with a love of simplicity. Thanks for the inspiration a long time
ago. RIP

------
ajna91
Sorry to hear, my acquintance with him is via the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors
in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

— Michael Crichton

~~~
dang
I like that quote of Crichton's too, but since it has nothing to do with the
actual Murray Gell-Mann or his life—only his name, which Crichton made use of
in a particularly arbitrary way—I think we should treat it as off topic in
this thread.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
Lest anyone think that dang is being uncharitable here, Crichton himself
admitted as much immediately before giving his oft-quoted definition [1]:

"Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all
experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call
it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by
dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the
effect, than it would otherwise have.)"

------
gilbetron
This makes me incredibly sad, as he is one of those people that has taught me
over the years in all kinds of ways. One of the most recent, and really rather
unrelated to his fields, is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

Which is amusing, but also profound. Fitting it is one of the last things he
taught me (not directly, of course!).

------
photojosh
I think about him often, because of the infamous
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

