Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T16:00:11.196Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Remarks on the occasion of Murray Gell-Mann's more or less 60th Birthday

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2009

M. Goldberger
Affiliation:
Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ 08540 USA
John H. Schwarz
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Get access

Summary

I first met Murray when he was a small child, a 19 year old graduate student at the Caltech of the East. I was an ancient of 26 at the time and was quite surprised when he announced upon meeting me that he knew who I was and that he had read all my papers. That was not such a monumental task at that time, but I found out that he had indeed read them. I discovered much more quickly than Viki Weisskopf that Murray was different from me and thee. We became friends and have remained so for nearly forty years.

When I went to Chicago in 1950 I began immediately agitating to hire Murray. It was no easy task to convince my senior colleagues that this was sensible since he had identically zero publications to his name. I did, however, prevail and we began a long collaboration that continued episodically for nearly 20 years. This was an exciting time in particle physics when there was a vast amount of experimental data and a paucity of theoretical tools to cope with it. It was a pleasure to work with Murray as we used everything we could lay our hands on theoretically to try to pick our way toward an understanding of what was a bewildering and complex landscape. His ingenuity, intensity, enthusiasm, and confidence that we could understand a great deal if we stuck to general principles and were not afraid to make bold conjectures was contagious.

Type
Chapter
Information
Elementary Particles and the Universe
Essays in Honor of Murray Gell-Mann
, pp. 211 - 212
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×