Murray Gell-Mann - The move to Caltech (73/200)

To listen to more of Murray Gell-Mann’s stories, go to the playlist: • Murray Gell-Mann (Scie...
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 was thinking of going to Copenhagen and spending the next year in Copenhagen. And I was learning some Danish and I thought that Margaret and I would get married, which we did in April, and that we might spend the next year together in Copenhagen. But my draft board was getting very upset. They said they understood a student and they understood a professor, but these, all these research positions and post-doctoral positions and things like that they didn't understand and they wanted me to go and have a regular professorship at a regular teaching institution and then they could defer me. So I gave up the… the trip to Copenhagen. We did go there for a few weeks in the summer, but I gave up the idea of going there for a term or a year-and I accepted the offer from Caltech, not from Columbia. I think there were some other offers as well, but I… I turned down everything but Caltech. Well, Chicago by that time was offering me a similar job.
[GW] And what did you find so attractive about going to Caltech at the time?
Well, I thought highly of Feynman. Although I didn't know him very well, I'd met him a few times. I thought highly of the experimental group of Anderson et al. who had discovered all these strange particles, or at least the… the second through twentieth examples or second through fifth examples of various strange particles. I thought of it as a place where the politics would be congenial, as opposed, say, to Berkeley where there was a huge split between people with exaggerated ideas about national security and so on and people who weren't like that. In fact there was that long-standing lawsuit, as you know, by people who had left Berkeley, because of the oath controversy and sued to get their jobs back. They won, actually, although very few of them really returned. So I thought of it as both scientifically and politically pleasant and I knew that the campus was rather attractive; clean, neat, not a messy place like Columbia.
[GW] Were you concerned-given your early broad interests- were you concerned about going to an Institute of Technology, quote, as distinct from a broad university?
Yes. Viki Weisskopf warned me about that. He came to the little house in Princeton and Margaret cooked dinner for us-I had a tiny little place right near the Institute for Advanced Study and so the three of us spent the evening together talking. And Viki said, ‘Well, if you go out there, you know, there'll be some things that are pretty strange. For example, very little in the way of bookshops, maybe a drug store with a few magazines.’ Actually there is one very famous bookstop… bookshop in Pasadena, but anyway I… I could see what he meant later on. He said very little in the way of cultured discussions, and that was absolutely true, cultured conversation was rare. Then he described going camping. Bellbrook [sic], his old pal, had taken him out camping in the desert and he had told him that it essentially never rains in the desert so they didn't have to worry about tents or anything. But then it did rain, and not only did it rain, but after the rain the palm trees emptied the water on him, the water that had accumulated in the palm fronds fell on him making him even wetter than he had been before on account of the rain and so on and so on and so forth. He didn't make it sound like a really wonderful place to be. So I was a little worried, and it turned out I was not… not really that happy there. I found it very narrow. There was a lot of good science, but not archaeology or natural history or evolutionary biology or linguistics or ecology or all the things that really turned me on outside of physics.

[@ashoksupadhyay6455]

"I thought highly of Feynman." I'll be damned MGM started as a Feynman fan boy like the rest of us as well!

[@professorboltzmann5709]

Deep within Feynman was annoying and had an ugly pompous ego ... I'm a big fan of his science, but you would sympathize with MGM once you study Feynman's character and lifestyle.

[@batuhankaynakacar834]

​​​@@professorboltzmann5709The guy literally has a book called "Surely you are joking Mr.Feynman" written by himself. It is not a stretch to think that he has a big ego. But because he has been idolized by many people, they are unable make an objective judgement.

[@WillN2Go1]

When I lived in NYC in 1979, my friend's parents were in the literary business. I'd attend these dinner parties where the sometimes famous adults would get a couple of bottles of white wine in them. Always they'd spend about 45 minutes bashing California and Los Angeles. Everybody was stupid, there was no culture, all that good weather softened their brains-- it was just an awful place to live. Well, I came from Detroit, which was bankrupt, crime ridden (more murders than Northern Ireland during the Troubles). If they want to talk about a bad place to live ..... The way I think, I'm trying to stay two moves ahead, what does this information imply? and... I couldn't wait to move to California. If these very intelligent New Yorkers had to get a snootful and spend 45 minutes every time they get together re-convincing themselves not to move out to California... it had to be wonderful. For 40 years it has been. I

[@duncanreeves225]

2:42 "as distinct from ..." I can't tell what the interviewer was trying to say there, what was that supposed to be?

[@arnav257]

“As distinct from a broad university.” You can find the full transcript in the description.

[@duncanreeves225]

I wish he would go a little more into what he meant by "cultured conversation"

[@us-Bahn]

In general, he means an institute of technology would lack the wider academic amenities of a traditional uni: faculty clubs that fostered multi-discipline debate; a variety of departmental libraries; wide spectrum of professors, students, lectures; proximity to a vibrant city; easy to get to; not all lab talk all the time; healthy male to female ratio. Probably a tech institute was viewed in the mid-1900s as an academic army for scientists and not a place where spouses would be content.