Prof. Murray Gell-Mann, a New Yorker on the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, was the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics awarded here today. Gell-Mann is Jewish. He was cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for “his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interaction.” Among these was the “quark,” purported to be the smallest known particle of matter.
Dr. Gell-Mann, 40, has been a leading theorist for many years in particle research. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree at Yale University in 1948 and his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. He joined the Caltech faculty in 1955. Five years ago he evolved a theory concerning the smallest particle in the universe, the so-called “quark.” The theory created a controversy in scientific circles, but it appeared to be verified this year when an Australian scientist at the University of Sydney announced that he believed he had isolated the “quark.”
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