For what contribution did M. Gell-Mann win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969?

The winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics was Professor M. Gell-Mann. He won the physics prize that year for "contributions and discoveries in the classification of elementary particles and their interactions."

Gell-Mann is a world-famous physicist. In 1961, he predicted the existence of two new particles based on his theory. Three years later, these two particles were experimentally proven, and Gell-Mann became famous.

Gell-Mann is a versatile theoretical physicist. Like Hawking, they embody the connection between contemporary natural scientists in exploring the phenomena and essence of various things in the world.

His works involve cosmology, elementary particle physics, quantum field theory, biology, economics, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, archeology, culture and art, and his thinking is abnormal. profound. This is related to Gelman’s interest since childhood.

Gell-Mann was born in New York in 1929. He has a brother named Ben who is 9 years older than him. When Gelman was 3 years old, Ben took him to play games.

At that time, they lived in Manhattan, New York. His brother taught him to read the words on the sunshine biscuit box and to observe birds and other small animals.

Gellman believed that New York was a forest that had been cleared. They often go to the zoo in the Bronx. There is an unspoiled grove there. It was this surviving natural environment that brought Gell-Mann closer to nature and became interested in the infinite mysteries of nature.

He began to observe the colorful nature. Discovering nature is extremely amazing.

The famous American writer, poet, and thinker Emerson said in 1837: "Nature has the earliest and most important influence on the minds of scholars. There is the sun every day, and after the sun sets, there are stars and night. The wind is always blowing and the grass is always growing. The scholar is the most strongly attracted by this phenomenon.

In his opinion, nature is a giant network created by God. This phenomenon is very similar to his own mind. He can never find the beginning and end of the mind."

As mentioned above, Gell-Mann was deeply influenced by nature. comprehended.

The author himself said: A long walk in nature left a deep impression on him, which was the strict classification of animals. Ben, the older brother, and Gell-Mann, the younger brother, often discussed how species are all connected through evolution. How closely related two different species are depends on how far down the evolutionary tree they have to find a common point.

Ben and Gelman often visit art museums, as well as museums that preserve a large number of cultural relics. They also loved reading history books and learned some of the meanings of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

They learned Latin, French, and Spanish with great interest. They also learned about the evolution of language, the branching of language families, and the kinship of specific languages.

What we should pay attention to is Gell-Mann’s views on culture and knowledge. He believes that there is no significant difference between the natural sciences, social behavioral sciences and classical languages ??and the fields of literature and art. He focuses on culture. unity.

Gell-Mann’s father moved his family to the United States in the early 20th century. Therefore, Gell-Mann was born in the United States, and he caught up with the United States’ immigration restrictions as soon as he was born. The language school run by his father was due to It closed down due to lack of students.

But my father found a stable job in a bank, and the income was barely enough to support the family. He encouraged children to study natural science. He was very interested in mathematics, physics and astronomy, and often taught himself the special theory of general relativity and the theory of cosmic expansion.

Interestingly, Gell-Mann did not take his father's advice to study physics at first because he was interested in languages ??and archeology, and his father believed that doing so would starve him.

Finally, his father assured Gell-Mann that cutting-edge physics is beautiful and charming and will make people feel beautiful. Gell-Mann studied physics with the idea of ??changing his career in the future. Unexpectedly, he entered a magical world and never returned.

What are quarks? For a long time, people thought that atoms were electrons and the protons and neutrons inside the nucleus.

But neutrons and protons are not fundamental. Physicists know that things previously thought to be fundamental later turn out to be made of even smaller things. Molecules are made up of atoms, which, although considered indivisible by the Greeks, were also shown to consist of a nucleus and electrons orbiting the nucleus. Later, it was proved that the nucleus is composed of neutrons and protons. This was only understood after the discovery of neutrons in 1932.

Now, scientists believe that neutrons and protons also have their own components, which are made of quarks. Theoretical physicists are now convinced that quarks are similar to electrons. In 1963, Gell-Mann named the basic component of the nucleus quark, whose original word is quark. He got this word from a sentence when he read the novel "Finnegan's Night" by the great writer Joyce. This sentence is "three quarks to Master Mark". "Quark" simply represents the sound of a gull.

The proton is composed of 2 "u quarks" (also called up quarks) and 1 "d quark" (also called down quarks). The neutron is composed of two "d quarks" and one "u quark".

The interesting thing is that u and d quarks have color and taste.

What kind of color and taste is this? Please enter the palace of science to taste it.