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Murray Gell-Mann - A differece of opinions (128/200)

4,153 views · Published 12 May 2016 · 1:26 · Indexed 12 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: This 56 is totally symmetrical. So one needs… if there was another variable, we needed total anti-symmetry in the other variable. And what Nambu found was that if he introduced a vector boson which was an octet in this new variable then he got indeed the singlet to be the lowest state, the anti-symmetric configuration to be the lowest state. And that way he got a symmetrical configuration in the… in the SU(3) and the spin variables—namely the 56. Perfect. Well, if I had read that paper I would probably have changed the, some of the assumptions. First of all I would have gotten rid of the integral charges, I would have had a… a color variable with no color contribution… no colored contribution to the electromagnetic current or charge. Second, I would have kept the confinement. Third, I would have suggested a Yang-Mills theory instead of just the potential from the exchange of a vector particle. And then we would have had basically quantum chromodynamics. So the… the necessary ideas were there in 1966.

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