Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-century Physics

Published by Vintage 04/01/2001, 2001, softcover, illustrated, index, 434 pages, condition: new.

No scientist has done more to shape our understanding of the universe than Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winner considered by many colleagues to be the most brilliant physicist of his generation. His discovery of the quark and the Eightfold Way were cornerstones for all that followed in particle physics, the effort to understand the very stuff of creation, In this, the first biography of Gell-Mann, George Johnson tells the story of a remarkable life.

One of the best - if not the best - biographies of a physicist by a non physicist that I have read. Often the journalist gets the big picture right, but the small details wrong, because theyre not physicists they dont recognize when they slightly misquote, for example. But Johnson gets all the physics right. A joy to read.