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Nobel prize winner speaking at Scranton U.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D., who received the prestigious award in 1969 for his work on the theory of elementary particles, will deliver the annual Harry Mullin, M.D., Lecture at the University of Scranton on Thursday at 8 p.m. in the Houlihan-McLean Center.

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Gell-Mann

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Gell-Mann, regarded by some as “the most clever man in the world,” is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, where he joined the faculty in 1955.

Gell-Mann has made profound contributions to science. He is perhaps best know for his “Eightfold Way,” a theory of organizing dozens of subatomic particles in collisions that involve atomic nuclei. Key to this research was Gell-Mann’s discovery that these particles are made up of quarks. Later, he collaborated with colleagues to build the quantum field theory of quarks and gluons known as quantum chromodynamics.

In addition to his work in the lab, Gell-Mann is author of “The Quark and the Jaguar,” published in 1994, which explains the ties between elementary nature and several complex adaptive systems. These systems are the focus of his current work, which incorporates a wide range of topics, including archeology, natural history, and linguistics.

Gell-Mann is leading the Evolution of Human Languages Program at the Santa Fe Institute.

For more than two decades, Gell-Mann served as director of the J.D. and C.T. MacArthur Foundation. He also was a board member of the Wildlife Conservation Society and a Citizen Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. The Mullin Lecture series honors the late Dr. Harry Mullin, who received his bachelor’s degree from the university, then St. Thomas College, in 1931. He dedicated a lifetime of service to his profession and the Scranton community. The series is sponsored by his wife, Ethel Mullin, his son, Brian Mullin, M.D., ’66, and Robbin Mullin.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 941-5873.