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Murray Gell-Mann - The summer of 1963 (110/200)

4,833 views · Published 17 May 2016 · 1:30 · Indexed 23 September 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: I was at Woods Hole for a while and… and then we… my son was born, Nicholas. We wanted it to be on July 4th because that was the birthday of Margaret's brother, but of course they… since we lived in Woods Hole and the confinement was going to take place in Boston, at Boston Lying-in Hospital, we had to have the birth induced and the doctors wouldn't do it on a holiday, so his birthday is July 6th. And, anyway all of these things were happening at once: the job question, the birth of a new child, and the thinking about these questions of national security and stability of the… of the security situation, worrying about quarks and so on and so forth, and it was… it was very complicated. The previous summer Murph and I had take a little time off from our discussions of anti-ballistic missiles to write a letter about the moving Regge poles in field theory–that was in the summer of ’62. In the summer of ’63 I didn't do that, it was just too much of a strain writing that report.

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