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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; date recorded: 1997]
TRANSCRIPT: I've known a number of prominent, physicists especially, quite well.
[GW] But who have you been most impressed with?
Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, Szilárd... Leó, Wolfgang Pauli, and I knew Niels Bohr slightly and I knew Heisenberg. I didn't think much of Heisenberg as a researcher after the war although I understand he was a really great researcher and great person before the war. I don't know, many of these people I knew, and a certain number of stories about them, but...
[GW] I was trying to elicit...
... I don't think, I… I don’t think I can give a very good appreciation of their roles. I just gave the Oppenheimer Lecture, the first one, at Berkeley, a couple of days ago, and there I gave some impressions of Robert, whom I liked very much despite the fact that he could occasionally be difficult. And I was so sad that he was a victim of such injustice as a result of adopting the army position on nuclear weapons instead of the air force position on nuclear weapons, even though the air force position wasn't that bad, I didn't think that people should be persecuted for taking a different position. Enrico was extremely funny, and... We had a great time at Chicago, I must say. There was quite a lunch table we had almost every day with Fermi, Yuri, and other people who were quite good like Mullican, and sometimes Szilárd. The conversation wasn't quite as fascinating as one would expect from listing these people, but it was sometimes quite amusing. Enrico was much taken with the funny papers, especially Li'l Abner. He spent a lot of time quoting Li'l Abner, of which he was inordinately fond. His friend, Gian Carlo Wick, whose mother was a novelist and who was very literary in his tastes, I think got him a subscription once to something like the Virginia Quarterly [sic] or the Sewanee Review, but Enrico much preferred L'il Abner.
[GW] How about people in more recent times?
Well Dick Feynman and I, of course, had offices just about next door to each other for 33 years, so I knew him pretty well. A great clown who was also a good scientist, although not quite the giant that some people make out, he was a very good scientist, and… and we had a lot of fun together, at least in the early years.
