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 3½ somersault half- twist from the pike position. George Johnson has nailed this one. Strange Beauty is complex, mind-expanding, beautiful, and true.” —James Gleick “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 “A masterpiece of scientific explication for the layman.… Science writing doesn’t get much better than this” —Phillip Anderson, Times Higher Education Supplement “Dramatic and lucid … a joy to read.” —Simon Singh, Daily Telegraph “Few physicists have displayed the poetic inspiration of the Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann.… In this biography he emerges as brilliant and often insufferable, relentlessly curious, hopelessly pedantic, and one of the best synthetic thinkers in the history of his field.” —The New Yorker “[Johnson] does a masterly job of making the arcana of particle physics available and shepherding the reader through increasing layers of complexity.” —Kathleen Stein, The New York Times “Johnson makes no attempt to hide Gell-Mann’s relentless insecurity, debilitating perfectionism and abrasive manner. He appears as a flawed, almost Shakespearean hero in an era when prominent physicists like Einstein, Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking are typically portrayed as comic-book heroes.… Gell-Mann could not have written such a perceptive book about himself.” —Louis A. Bloomfield, The New York Times Book Review “[Johnson] describes, convincingly, the life of a tormented genius and polymath, and his struggles with doubts, colleagues and perceived enemies.… An outstanding book.” —Chris Llewellyn Smith, The Times (London) “A fascinating, skillfully composed, and entertaining biography.” —Gregg Easterbrook, Wilson Quarterly “An altogether impressive performance.… I don’t envy Murray the weird experience of reading so penetrating and perceptive a biography of himself.… What a story! George Johnson has written a fine biography of this important and complex man.” —David L. Goodstein, Engineering & Science (Caltech) “A riveting read for anybody interested in the history and sociology of late-twentieth-century science.” —Nature “Johnson, an award-winning science writer, paints a fascinating portrait of this brilliant, complicated, sometimes insecure and often exasperating man.” —Marcus Chown, New Scientist George Johnson Strange Beauty George Johnson is a former Alicia Patterson Fellow and finalist for the Rhône-Poulenc Prize. His work for The New York Times received the 1999 Science Journalism Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His previous books include Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence. In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads, and Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order. He lives with his wife in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and can be reached through the Web at talaya.net. ALSO BY GEORGE JOHNSON Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order In the Palaces of Memory: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2000 Copyright © 1999 by George Johnson All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999. Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Harold P. Furth: “Perils of Modern Living” by Harold P. Furth. Originally published in The New Yorker in 1956. Reprinted by permission of the author. Alfred A. Knopf: “Cosmic Gall,” from Collected Poems 1953’1993 by John Updike, copyright © 1993 by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Johnson, George. Strange beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the revolution in twentieth-century physics / by George Johnson. — 1st ed. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-30776545-1 1. Gell-Mann, Murray. 2. Nuclear physicists— United States—Biography. I. Title. QC774.G45J65 1999 530′.092—dc21 [B] 99-19952 Author photograph © Jerry Bauer Diagrams by Arlene Lee www.vintagebooks.com v3.1 For Nancy There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. —Francis Bacon (Quoted by Murray Gell-Mann in an article explaining his theory of cosmic-ray particles whose behavior seemed to defy the laws of physics) In our work we are always between Scylla and Charybdis; we may fail to abstract enough, and miss important physics, or we may abstract too much and end up with fictitious objects in our models turning into real monsters that devour us. —Murray Gell-Mann, in a 1972 lecture on quarks in Schladming, Austria