Recently read (finally finished): Strange Beauty by George Johnson.The sub-title is "Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th Century Physics". It's a well-written biography of Gell-Mann, the brilliant, complicated character who gave us quarks, strangeness, the Eightfold Way, and other poetically named subatomic entities and schemes in particle physics.
Since Gell-Mann was such a force in theoretical physics and was among the best minds of the century, the book is also a primer on these subjects, and attempts to lucidly explain the difficult concepts. Outside of scientific circles, he is less famous than his Caltech colleague and sparring partner Richard Feynman, which is unfortunate when you consider his numerous achievements. He did win a Nobel Prize, though.
The book paints a vivid picture of life in those heady days, and we meet lots of prominent physicists, and it does a good job of balancing biographical details with physics. It's not just the story of a life, but the history of a life's work, positioned within a larger background of scientific enquiry as well. It's respectful of and sympathetic to it's subject, without hiding his pricklier sides. All in all, an interesting read, and a good example of what would be a pretty difficult book to write. Thankfully, due to the skill of the author, it's not a very difficult book to read.
