Zweig, George (1937-…), a Soviet-born American physicist, was one of two scientists who proposed the first theory of subatomic particles known as quarks. Zweig and the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, working independently of each other, proposed their theory in 1964. Zweig originally called the particles aces; Gell-Mann coined the term quarks. Quarks are the “building blocks” of which protons and neutrons are made.
George Zweig was born in Moscow on May 20, 1937. He came to the United States with his family in 1938 and was educated at the University of Michigan and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He received a Ph.D. degree from Caltech in 1963. From 1963 to 1964, he worked at CERN, a research center for the study of subatomic particles in Geneva, Switzerland. Zweig then returned to Caltech and became a professor there in 1967. In 1983, he joined the staff of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
An atom consists of a central nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting the nucleus. Scientists had once thought that protons and neutrons were elementary particles—not composed of any smaller particles. However, by the 1960’s, researchers discovered hundreds of other particles that were similar to protons and neutrons and to one another. Zweig’s and Gell-Mann’s theory proposed that all nuclear particles are merely different arrangements of a few simple parts—the quarks. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, experiments showed that protons and neutrons are made up of smaller particles, thus confirming the existence of quarks.
See also Quark ; Subatomic particle .
