Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel-winning physicist who developed quark idea, dies at 89

Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning American physicist who devised the “eightfold way” to bring order to the world of elementary particles and conceived the idea of “quarks” to explain the structure of such particles, died May 24 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 89.

The death was confirmed by Jenna Marshall, a spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Institute, which Dr. Gell-Mann helped found. The cause was not disclosed.

Among physicists, Dr. Gell-Mann could easily be placed on the timeline of the centuries-old effort to find the fundamental laws that governed the behavior of the everyday world and the universe around us.

He was a pioneer in the development of what is called the “standard model” of particle physics, a guide to the fundamental behavior of the constituents of the universe.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/murray-gell-mann-nobel-winning-physicist-who-developed-quark-idea-dies-at-89/2019/05/25/8a3b3d16-7e87-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html