"The first thing that makes me respect Murray is that unlike all his contemporaries, including Feynman, Weinberg, Hawking, and all the other particle physicists, he saw that complexity is the next big problem. The kind of breakthroughs he made in the early 1960s in terms of impact on the world of science are not going to get made in that domain, they are going to get made in this domain. Murray recognized that, and has become more than just conversant with what's going on and with what the problems are." - J. Doyne Farmer [0].<p>Last month, there was a neat discussion of Murray Gell-Man's idea on plectics: the study of simplicity and complexity [1]. He definitely influenced my views on systems theory. Thank you and rest in peace.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/murray_gell_mann-chapter-19-plectics" rel="nofollow">https://www.edge.org/conversation/murray_gell_mann-chapter-1...</a>.<p>[1]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760682" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19760682</a>.
These video series with Gell-Mann are super interesting in my opinion -- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LU6kbao3vo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LU6kbao3vo</a>
He gave an amusing talk at Google in 2007 about creativity[0], where I thought he talked about one of the important things in science is actually believing the data since it seems so outlandish. I thought it was in this talk, but skimming the video I can't seem to find it. The talk is quite amusing regardless.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M2l-jzRG8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7M2l-jzRG8</a>
NYT obituary: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/obituaries/murray-gell-mann-died-.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/obituaries/murray-gell-ma...</a>
Embarrassing confession: For 20 years thanks to my shallow physics education (i.e. for engineering) I always thought Gell and Mann were two people, like Meyers and Briggs, and (appropriately) Dunning and Kruger.
A true giant. The concept of quarks really captured my mind as a kid. It was one of the first things that I recall that made me realize there was a whole world of knowledge beyond my basic textbooks.
Sorry to hear, my acquintance with him is via the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.<p>"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."<p>— Michael Crichton
This makes me incredibly sad, as he is one of those people that has taught me over the years in all kinds of ways. One of the most recent, and really rather unrelated to his fields, is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect</a><p>Which is amusing, but also profound. Fitting it is one of the last things he taught me (not directly, of course!).
I think about him often, because of the infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect</a>