1929-
Physicist

Early Life and Education.

Murray Gell-Mann was born in New York City on 15 September 1929. His parents were immigrants from Austria. Gell-Mann wanted to study archaeology, but his father wanted him to enter a more practical field such as engineering. They compromised, and he majored in physics. Gell-Mann received his B.S. from Yale in 1948 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1951.

Working with Einstein.

After MIT he worked for a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with Albert Einstein, at the University of Chicago from 1952 to 1955, and then at the California Institute of Technology. He became a full professor while in his mid twenties, only four years after receiving his Ph.D.

Work with Atomic and Subatomic Particles.

Some of his greatest work was done with fellow Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman, with whom he studied the theory of weak interactions...