Absolutely <i>fascinating</i> to realize that when Richard Feynman talks about how the name of the thing doesn't tell you anything about the thing[1][2], he may be ranting about Murray Gell-Mann.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018dvyg" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018dvyg</a><p>[2] I quoted the key sentence at the top of <a href="http://akkartik.name/post/teaching-taste" rel="nofollow">http://akkartik.name/post/teaching-taste</a>
> When Feynman died, Murray wrote a rather snarky obituary, saying of Feynman: “He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself”. I never quite understood why Murray—who could have gone to any university in the world—chose to work at Caltech for 33 years in an office two doors down from Feynman.<p>This is great. Although being interesting and challenging > being likeable, especially for a person like Murray seems to be. Especially professional environments.<p>I'm curious why Feynman decided to work at Caltech for such a long time as well, given he also could have been anywhere.<p>Some of these anecdotes about Murray are as good as Feynman's.
My favorite quote from him came from his tech talk at Google where, in response to a question about String Theory from the audience he replied, "String Theory was invented in my lab, I thought it was a stupid idea then, and I still do."
"As it turned out, I never talked to Murray about science again. The last time I saw Murray was in 2012 at a peculiar event in New York City for promising high-school students. I said hello. Murray looked blank. I said my name, and held up my name tag. “Do I know you?”, he said. I repeated my name. Still blank. I couldn’t tell if it was a problem of age—or a repeat of the story of the beta function. But, with regret, I walked away."<p>That is incredibly sad.
Amos Tversky to Murray Gell-Mann: "There's no one in the world as smart as you think you are" (from The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis)
Its fashionable on HN to disparage Wolfram but I have grown to ignore his ego and develop appreciation of his personality, experience and work. His anecdotes about Feynman as well as Gell-Mann is worth treasuring. Someone who got to personally know these titans is a very enviable position itself and he is probably one of the last links to that great generation. This blog post is highly recommended for all Physics enthusiast and is full of many great links and diversions.
Side note, there's also 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>
Oh Wolfram, never change. Even in a very charming and personal obituary about someone he obviously admires, Wolfram's ego shines through. As does his bizarre claim to ownership of all of complexity theory. No one cares that Gell-Mann left you out of the index of his book, Stephen.