The Resume

(September 15, 1929-May 24, 2019)
Born in Manhattan, New York
Won the Nobel Prize in Physics for work on elementary particles (1969)
Postulated the existence of quarks
Co-developer of 'quantum chromodynamics' to explain the strong interactions of nuclear particles
Member of the President's Science Advisory Committee (1969-72,1994-2001)

Why he might be annoying:

He would 'correct' colleagues on the proper pronunciation of their own names.
He was jealous of Richard Feynman's popularity, especially his status as a best-selling author.
When he decided to write a popular science book, he declared 'I am writing a book for peasants.'
The result, 'The Quark and the Jaguar' was described by a biographer as 'the Heaven's Gate of science books': it was submitted well past the deadline and still incomplete, prompting Bantam Books to reject the manuscript and demand a refund of the hefty advance they had paid.

Why he might not be annoying:

He was valedictorian of his prep school.
He entered Yale when he was 15 and had earned a PhD by age 21.
A colleague said, 'Murray has no particular talent for physics, but he's so smart he's a great physicist anyway.'
He had a knack for coming up with memorable names for his theories, taking 'quark' from a passage in James Joyce's 'FInnegan's Wake,' and naming a system for classifying subatomic particles 'the eight-fold way' after the 'noble eight-fold path' of Buddhism.
He said, 'What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.'

Credit: C. Fishel

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• 20th Century Scientists
• 21st Century Scientists
• Birdwatchers
• Buddy! Dude! Man! Guy!
• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 55]
• Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Paranormal
• Hyphenated Names
• I am an Agnostic
• I Attended MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• I Attended Yale
• I Died in 2019 (Ranked: 89)
• I Earned a Doctorate
• I Married in 1992
• Look at Me, I'm a Bobblehead
• Nobel Prize for Physics (Ranked: 1969)
• Obama for America [2008]
• Profiles 35751-36000 (Ranked: 35957)
• Scientists
• Valedictorians
• We Died on the Same Day (Ranked: 20190524)

Year In Review:

In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
In 2020, Out of 7 Votes: 42.86% Annoying
In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2018, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
In 2016, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2015, Out of 11 Votes: 54.55% Annoying
In 2014, Out of 16 Votes: 50.0% Annoying