NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS 1969

GELL-MANN, MURRAY.

Symmetries of Baryons and Mesons.

Lancaster, PA and New York, American Institute of Physics, 1962. Royal8vo. In the original blue printed wrappers. In "The Physical Review", vol. 125, second series, Number 3, February 1, 1962. With previous owner's small stamp (Danish physicist C. Møller) to front wrapper. Light wear to extremities, otherwise a fine and clean copy. Pp. 1067-1084.

First publication of Gell-Mann's Nobel prize winning paper in which he classified the hadrons according to a system he called the 'Eightfold Way', and which ultimately led to the quark model of hadron composition.

"Professor Gell-Mann. You have given fundamental contributions to our knowledge of mesons and baryons and their interactions. You have developed new algebraic methods which have led to a far-reaching classification of these particles according to their symmetry properties. The methods introduced by you are among the most powerful tools for further research in particle physics..." (Nobel Prize Presentation Speech).

"The second stage on the way to quarks was what Gell-Mann called the 'eightfold way'. Symmetries are an important feature of physics. They are properties observed when transformation are applied to physical systems. The mathematical theory of transformations is called group theory. In earlier episodes we already discussed features of angular momentum, spin, and isospin, which are described by a special unitary group called SU(2), without mentioning that term. In 1961, Gell-Mann combined isospin and strangeness to form a quantity which he called unitary spin and studied its properties under the group SU(3) of transformation. [Presented in the present paper]" (The Harvest of A Century).

Order-nr.: 49652