CERNCOURIER
CERN COURIER JULY/AUGUST 2019 25
CERNCOURIER.COMTRIBUTE MURRAY GELL-MANN 1929–
GELL-M ANN’S MULTI-
DIMENSIONAL GENIUS
Murray Gell-Mann was one of the
great geniuses of the 20th century,
says Lars Brink, and stands out
among other Nobel laureates.
WEF/M WuertenbergO
ne of the 20th century’s most amazing brains has
stopped working. Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann
died on 24 May at the age of 89. It is impossible to
write a complete obituary of him, since he had so many
dimensions that some will always be forgotten or neglected.
Murray was the leading particle theorist in the 1950s
and 1960s in a field that had attracted the brightest young
stars of the post-war generation. But he was also a polyglot
who could tell you any noun in at least 25 languages, a
walking encyclopaedia, a nature lover and a protector of
endangered species, who knew all the flowers and birds. He
was an early environmentalist, but he was so much more.
It has been one of the biggest privileges in my life to have
worked with him and to have been a close friend of his.
Murray Gell-Mann was born into a Jewish immigrant
family in New York six weeks before the stock-market crash
of October 1929. He was a trailing child, with a brother
who was nine years older and relatively aged parents. He
used to joke that he had been born by accident. His father
had failed his studies and, after Murray’s birth, worked
as a guard in a bank vault. Murray was never particularly
close to father, but often talked about himChild prodigy
According to family legend, the first words that Murray
spoke were “The lights of Babylon”, when he was looking
at the night sky over New York at the age of two. At three,
he could read and multiply large numbers in his head. At
five he could correct older people about their language and
in discussions. His interest for numismatics had already
begun: when a friend of the family showed him what he
claimed was a coin from Emperor Tiberius’ time, Murray
corrected the pronunciation and said it was not from that
time. At the age of seven, he participated in – and won – a
major annual spelling competition in New York for students
up to the age of 12. The last word that only he could spell
and explain was “subpoena”, also citing its Latin origins
and correcting the pronunciation of the moderator.
By the age of nine he had essentially memorised the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. The task sounds impossible, but
some of us did a test behind his back once in the 1970s.The late Myron Bander had learnt and studied an incom-
prehensible word and steered the discussion on to it over
lunch. Of course Murray knew what the word was. He even
recalled the previous and subsequent entries on the page.
Murray’s parents didn’t know what to do with him, but
his piano teacher (music was not his strong side) made
them apply for a scholarship so that he could start at a
good private school. He was three years younger than
his classmates, yet they always looked to him to see if he
approved of what the teachers said. His tests were faultless,
except for the odd exception. Once he came home and had
scored “only” 97%, to which his father said: How could
you miss this? His brother, who was more “normal”, was
a great nature lover and became a nature photographer
and later a journalist. He taught Murray about birds and
plants, which would become a lifelong passion.THE AUTHOR
Lars Brink
Chalmers Institute
of Technology,
Sweden.A giant of theoretical physics Murray Gell-Mann photographed at the annual
meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2012.CCJulAug19_GellMann_Brink_v6.indd 25 27/06/2019 15:Instrumentation Technologies, d.o.o. / Velika pot 22, SI-5250 Solkan, Slovenia / e: [email protected] / w: http://www.i-tech.si
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