Murray Gell-Man is More Than Brilliant

This past week, I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with world renown physicist Murray Gell-Man, who won the Nobel Prize in 1969. Not only is he brilliant, but interesting, engaging, amusing, authentic and warm. He also immediately shows both right and red brain intelligence, a rarity among ‘greats.’

This year’s TED stage design included a series of three photos of mavericks, icons, inventors and geniuses throughout the course of the past two centuries. Each session, faces would rotate or change entirely, depending on the theme.

In his session, there were fabulous photos of Sir Isaac Newton and Einstein, who he satirically acknowledges as he enters stage left, “Thanks for putting photos of my colleagues up.”

His focus was around beauty and elegance and exploring why beauty and elegance is a successful criterion in choosing a correct theory in fundamental physics. “What is the role here?” he asks the audience. “With regard to beauty and simplicity, think about the comformality of nature itself. You don’t always need something more when you ‘think’ you need something more.”

Indeed, pure beauty and elegance often present themselves in the simplest forms and in this simplicity, we can learn so much about not just physics and science, but the world.

I learned that Murray has an astounding amount of energy and I’ll add – electricity. He also understands how women think, another rarity.

I’ll finish with a final observation – the man can dance. He managed to keep up with everyone on the dance floor during the final party, including yours truly and high energy Japanese dancer Kenichi Ebina, who is likely a third of his age. Thanks for your incredible inspiration Murray.