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Murray Gell-Mann - Pugwash meeting in India (120/200)

4,208 views · Published 17 May 2016 · 2:06 · Indexed 10 November 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2016 · Science & Technology

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New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West; date recorded: 1997]

TRANSCRIPT: In February 1964 a lot of things happened. The letter to the Physical Rev…  to Physics Letters about quarks appeared, I think on February 1st. The omega minus was reported about February 1st also. I accepted the invitation to Harvard only to reject it a couple of weeks later… only to cancel my acceptance a couple of weeks later, which made them really angry. And also I went to India to Udaipur, to the Lake Palace Hotel [sic] in the middle of the lake, and to attend a Pugwash meeting. It was the only Pugwash meeting I've ever attended. Originally the Pugwash meetings were somewhat out… out of the mainstream; people who wanted to do something fairly radical about arms control, about the Cold War, and so on and so on. And people were…   who attended were suspected of leftist sympathies and that sort of thing. But by February 1964 this was not the case: US government officials went; former US government officials who had just been in the government until a few days earlier; and so on and so forth, and it represented a sort of informal negotiating forum, at which proposals could be brought up that were later brought up between governments. It was quite interesting. I had a very, very remarkable time there. Of course I love bird-watching and India in winter is fantastic for bird-watching. I saw lots of new things. I made lots of new friends. Just had a really good time.

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