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New York-born physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019) was a theoretical physicist. His considerable contributions to physics include the theory of quantum chromodynamics. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. [Listener: Geoffrey West]
TRANSCRIPT: In the summer of ’58, Dick Feynman and I worked together on another little paper which he presented in Geneva at the–not at the International Meeting on Particle Physics, but at another meeting which was on the uses of atomic energy or something like that. But at that meeting there was a little session on pure physics and there he presented a little paper by the two of us on various issues in connection with the strong and the weak interactions. After that we didn't collaborate very much any more. I like the situation where one thought in terms of 'we'; we do this, we do that. And I am… under those conditions I am willing to be very generous about credit and so on, pooling ideas and joint responsibility; whereas Dick kept thinking in terms of what I did: I did this, I thought of that, I thought of this, I thought of that and so on. And actually he thought very highly of me and of my contributions, that wasn't the problem. It was just the… the way in which he operated was very much–what shall I say–was one of being very self-contained, even though we were collaborating. And I didn't like it very much. I didn't… I don't think we did very much collaboration after that.
[GW] Did you talk much physics after that?
Oh yeah, we continued to talk about physics for quite a while and off and on we did until the very end. Just before he died we had a conversation about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, for example, on which we had very similar views, and... no, we had… we had quite compatible views on a lot of things and we did talk from time to time, but it's just that I was so irritated by his constantly speaking about what I did, meaning himself. And this despite the fact that he did not really depreciate my contributions to anything. I know that he didn't, but somehow he was incapable of a… of a collective approach to anything.
