Murray Gell-Mann
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

In 1969, Professor Gell-Mann received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Professor Gell-Mann's "eightfold way" theory brought order to the chaos created by the discovery of some 100 particles in the atom's nucleus. Then he found that all of those particles, including the neutron and proton, are composed of fundamental building blocks that he named "quarks." The quarks are permanently confined by forces coming from the exchange of "gluons." He and others later constructed the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons, called "quantum chromodynamics," which seems to account for all the nuclear paticles and their strong interactions.

Besides being a Nobel laureate, Professor Gell-Mann has received the Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Research Corporation Award, and the John J. Carty medal of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded honorary doctoral degrees from many institutions, including Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Turin, Italy, and Cambridge and Oxford Universities, England. In 1988 he was listed on the United Nations Environmental Program Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement (the Global 500). In 1994 he shared the 1989 Erice "Science For Peace" Prize.

Professor Gell-Mann is the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until 1993. He is a director of the J.D. and C.T. MacArthur Foundation, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former Citizen Regent of the Smithsonian, 1974-1988, and a former member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, 1969-1972. He is currently a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Although a theoretical physicist, Professor Gell-Mann's interests extend to many other subjects, including natural history, historical linguistics, archaeology, history, depth psychology, and creative thinking, all subjects connected with biological evolution, cultural evolution, and learning and thinking. His recent research at the Santa Fe Institute has focused on complex adaptive systems, which brings all these areas of study together. He is also concerned about policy matters related to world environmental quality (including conservation of biological diversity), restraint in population growth, sustainable economic development, and stability of the world political system.