By: Veronica Draayers and Brin Gibson
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Born September 15, 1929
in lower Manhattan
Child prodigy
Entered Yale at the age of
15 as a member of
Jonathan Edwards college
American physicist and
linguist
Received Noble Prize in
physics in 1969
He is currently the Robert
Andrews Milikan
Professor of Theoretical
Physics Emeritus at
Caltech
• He developed the quark
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diagram
He found that all of the
particles in the nuclei,
such as the protons and
the neutrons are made
up of quarks
Protons and neutrons
are called hadrons
Protons are made up of
three quarks
Quarks are the
fundamental building
blocks of protons and
neutrons
Quark Model (way to
classify hadrons in their
valence quarks)
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Quantum Mechanics
By the 1960’s nearly 100
different particles had
been discovered in the
nucleus of the atom.
Gell-Mann classified
them using their
electrical charge and
“strangeness” in octets or
“the eightfold way”.
noticed that there was an
empty spot and
estimated the charge and
“strangeness” number to
develop quarks.
Proton smashing
• He helped come up with the
accepted theory of quantum
chromodynamics
(fundamental force
describing the interactions
between quarks and gluons)
• He is also known for the seesaw theory of neutrino
masses (helps describe the
masses of neutrinos relative
to quarks)
• He helped keep the idea of
string theory alive when the
concept was unpopular
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
 http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gel0bio
-1
 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/la
urestes/1969/gell-mann-bio.html