![]() For years a favorite argument among physicists was over "Who is smarter, Murray or Dick?"īut Gell-Mann - who, in semi-retirement, continues to lecture and write - has, to his bewilderment and consternation, never become as famous as his old sparring partner. ![]() (He famously took the spelling from a line in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!") It was Gell-Mann who came up with the Eightfold Way - an elegant organizing scheme that made sense of the "subatomic zoo," herding some 100 unruly particles into their proper cages. Those who paid attention in physics-for-poets classes may remember Gell-Mann as the man who, working down the hall from Feynman, discovered quarks - the tiny subparticles from which just about everything is made. But no one finds the hype more annoying than Murray Gell-Mann. Many physicists are puzzled and a little annoyed to see their old colleague, brilliant as he was, elevated to the level of Einstein. The Mark Taper Forum, in Los Angeles, is planning a production next year called Tuva or Bust!, with Alan Alda as Feynman. Recent books and recordings, including Six Easy Pieces, and Feynman's Lost Lecture, all sold well, and now a new collection, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, has made science best-seller lists. Since his death, from cancer, in 1988, the Feynman industry shows no sign of diminishing. A precursor to today's computer hackers, Feynman picked the locks on the vaults containing atomic secrets, and then left taunting notes to show how easily security had been thwarted. Feynman fans can choose among three biographies, two collections of dictated autobiographical reminiscences, dozens of lectures, a collection of the scientist's drawings (he also liked to scrawl on placemats at a topless bar), and Safecracker Suite, a recording of Feynman slapping the skins of bongo drums and regaling listeners with his capers as a young physicist on the Manhattan Project.
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