Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019)

Abstract

In a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study, the famous slip of the tongue gave him an idea that the particles had a previously unknown fundamental property - he labelled it "strangeness". A conscription notice at the end of the Korean War - his exemption paperwork had not been filed properly - prompted him to send an article to the Physical Review. In 1969, Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions".