Feather
Home People Murray Gell-Mann In 1963 When I Assigned The
Murray Gell-Mann - placeholder

"In 1963, when I assigned the name 'quark' to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been 'kwork.'"

— Murray Gell-Mann

In 1963 When I Assigned The

In 1963, when I assigned the name 'quark' to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been 'kwork.'

— Murray Gell-Mann
discovery language physics

About this quote

Murray Gell-Mann explained the origin of the name "quark" in his 1994 book The Quark and the Jaguar. He had coined the term in 1964 when he and physicist George Zweig independently proposed that protons and neutrons are made of smaller particles. Gell-Mann found the spelling in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake — "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" — and argued the context of the pub setting could justify the pronunciation "kwork" rather than "kwark."

Source

The Quark and the Jaguar, 1994

You don't need something more to get something more. That's what emergence means.
— Murray Gell-Mann
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds.
— Murray Gell-Mann
Today the network of relationships linking the human race to itself and to the rest of the biosphere is so complex that all aspects affect all others to an extraordinary degree.
— Murray Gell-Mann
View all quotes by Murray Gell-Mann →