Murray Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He introduced the "eightfold way[?]" as a means to coherently organize the great numbers of particles that had been found by experimentalists in prior years. The eightfold way establishes a clear link between quark arrangements and abstract algebra.
Gell-Mann wrote a popular science book, The Quark and the Jaguar, Adventures in the Simple and the Complex.
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