Murray Gell-Mann was a scientist of great value and great ability: he spoke more languages \u200b\u200bthan you know his friends list, was a connoisseur of things very diverse, from botany to the technique of carpet weaving in the Caucasus, and, it was said with pardonable exaggeration, was considered a great physicist, not because he had special aptitude for physics, but simply because he deigned to include among its many interests. He was also very arrogant. From the widespread view that it was the smartest man in the world, Gell-Mann was not the least willing to dissent, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize - echoing Newton's comment that if he had seen farther than others, it was because he was hoisted on the shoulders of giants - claimed that if he, Gell-Mann, could see farther than others, it was because he was surrounded by dwarves. Intellectual great fighter, capable of great arrogance, corrected for strangers as pronounced their own name, while he, in turn, would pronounce foreign words with an accent so impeccable that sometimes he could not make himself understood.
Richard Feynman, Gell-Mann's main competitor for the title of most intelligent man in the world but alien to any arrogance, Gell-Mann once met in the hallway of the California Institute of Technology, which gave up their offices, and asked him where he had been in the journey he had made a few days earlier. "A Montréal " said Gell-Mann, greater emphasis on French pronunciation so as to give the impression of suffocation. Feynman - which, as Gell-Mann, was born in New York - failed to understand that my colleague was talking about cities. "Do not you think" he asked when he finally realized that Gell-Mann was referring to Montreal, "you do not believe that the purpose of language is communication?"
These habits may have the effect of digging a moat around it, but it may be that Gell-Mann, like Newton, was in need of a moat.
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