Amazon.com
Murray Gell-Mann is a leading light in 20th-century physics, yet his name rings bells only for those interested in particle physics. Science writer George Johnson was fortunate enough to develop a friendly relationship with the great scientist, and his biography, Strange Beauty, glows with a rare intimacy gained from a notoriously private and irascible man. From his childhood in New York City to his current scientific elder-statesman status in New Mexico, Johnson explores Gell-Mann's life in glorious detail. A passionate, jealous, and brilliant man, he was capable of both profound insight and bitter lifelong rivalries, but Johnson finds there's much more to the man than these two simple poles; Gell-Mann's volatile family life and deft academic maneuvering also find room in this expansive biography.
The reader finds that Johnson's careful attention to detail shows more than it tells through enlightening stories of Gell-Mann's troubled, romantic, or pretentious dealings with peers, family, and even strangers. Explaining his strange surname means investigating old phone books, scientific legend, and family history, as the scientist is unwilling to shed light on the mystery (it turns out that his father hyphenated it, and Murray dreamed up etymologies as needed--giving rise to the tangled web of myths). Johnson is up to the challenge of recording the life story of a man nearly as strange as the quarks he discovered and named, and Strange Beauty lives up to the promise of its title. --Rob Lightner
From Publishers Weekly
Up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm aren't just states of mind: they're kinds of quarks, the mind-bending, omnipresent sub-subatomic particles co-discovered and named in the early 1960s by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann. New York Times science reporter Johnson (Fire in the Mind) has written a brisk, accessible life of the Nobel-winning scientist, who will turn 70 next month. Gell-Mann grew up poor in New York City, the son of Eastern European Jews. Still in his teens, he attended Yale and MIT, and soon afterward won notice for his work on cosmic rays. Gell-Mann followed up his insights about quarks with important work at Caltech and elsewhere on superstrings, supergravity and mathematical complexity. His adult life has had its hardships: his daughter gave much of her life to an American Stalinist fringe group, and his wife died of cancer in 1981. (He's since remarried.) Johnson makes clear that Gell-Mann's direct, sometimes arrogant manner could make him difficult to work with; admired by physicists, he failed to achieve the wider fame of his media-friendly colleague, the late Richard Feynman. While Johnson relates such troubles sympathetically, the story of Gell-Mann's life is in large part the story of his and others' researches and discoveries. Explaining difficult fields like quantum physics, Johnson uses as many analogies, and as little math, as he can, while trying always to give some picture of what scientific problems Gell-Mann and his fellow scientists solved. The result is a careful if colloquial biography, perfect for readers who aren'tAor aren't yetAworking scientists. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
One of the most notable physicists of the Nuclear Age, Murray Gell-Mann worked closely with Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynmann, and others to help unlock the secrets of the subatomic world. In 1969, he received a Nobel prize for his work on the interaction of elementary particles and their classification. Now New York Times science writer Johnson (Fire in the Mind) has written a well-balanced biography of this renowned scientist's complex life and work. Noting Gell-Mann's idiosyncrasies, his faults, and his accomplishments, Johnson follows his subject through his passions (nature and conservation, art collection, anthropology, ornithology, and linguistics), his struggles with chronic writer's block, and his incredible scientific achievements. While it is necessarily dense in parts, this book is free of mathematics and is accessible to the advanced lay reader. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.AJames Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Louis A. Bloomfield
...a multidimensional portrait of a brilliant but tormented man who dominated elementary particle physics for 20 years.
Chet Raymo, Scientific American, January 2000
"'Strange Beauty' 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, known for his books 'Fire in the Mind' and 'In the Palaces of Memory' and for incisive reporting in the New York Times. 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."
Chris Llewellyn Smith; The Times, London
"The story of [particle physics] from the 1940s to the 1990s, is told in this fascinating book. George Johnson also describes, convincingly, the life of a tormented genius and polymath, and his struggles with doubts, colleagues and perceived enemies. The result is compelling reading for anyone interested in the evolution of fundamental physics over the past 50 years, and in how science actually progresses. . . . [A]n outstanding book."
Marcia Bartusiak, Washington Post Book World
An insightful biography of physicist Murray Gell-Mann [that] splendidly captures the energetic spirit of this golden age of theoretical physics . . . 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."
From Kirkus Reviews
Part biography, part textbook on quarks and other phenomena discovered by one of the great particle physicists of the twentieth century. Johnson (a New York Times science writer) first introduces us to Murray Gell-Mann in the present day, as a likable retiree living in Santa Fe. He sets his personal experiences with Gell-Mann against Gell-Mann the legend, cutting colleagues down to size if their viewpoints didn't coincide with his own, or calling them by unpleasant and sarcastic nicknames. Gell-Mann's broad scope of knowledge started in his youth in New York City, where he would visit museums, the zoo, anywhere he could learn about the world around him. In school young Murray was always eager to show off his knowledge, winning a spelling bee at the age of seven. At fourteen, he won a scholarship to Yale, moving from there to MIT, where he reveled in the unsolved problems in physics. It was these problems, theories about particles yet to be discovered, that Gell-Mann would spend his career solving. Johnson is not afraid to present these theories in great detail, giving crystal-clear descriptions of some of the most abstract and convoluted ideas in physics. Nor is he afraid to delve into the personal side of Gell-Mann, including his relationship with his colleague Richard Feynman, a friendship at times strained by the fame that Feynman achieved from his best-selling book of autobiographical anecdotes. Gell-Mann wanted to write one, too, but for all his knowledge he was crippled by a lifelong case of writer's block. The limited success of his autobiography once it was finished presumably led to Strange Beauty. A must-read for anyone studying physics or its history, and for others not afraid to swim in the sometimes deep and murky waters of cutting-edge science. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book News, Inc.
Johnson, who covers science for the presents a biography of the Novel laureate physicist who discovered the quark and the Eightfold Way, cornerstones for all that has followed in particle physics. He describes his prodigal childhood, his scientific achievements, his abrasive and competitive drive, and family crises. -- Copyright © 1999 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR All rights reserved Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR
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