Among the speakers who addressed this subject was Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, the author of the quark theory of matter, which radically changed the course of science 30 years ago and won Dr. Gell-Mann the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969.

He has since worked on several different areas of physics including composite Higgs models, heavy quark effective theory, dimensional deconstruction, little Higgs, and unparticle theories.

Since 1963 when the quark theory of matter was born, physicists have regarded quarks - the particles that make up the protons and neutrons within the nuclei of atoms - as indivisible.

For techniques, see Lattice QCD, 1/N expansion, perturbative QCD, Soft-collinear effective theory, heavy quark effective theory, chiral models, and the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio model.

Also named the K-meson system, it was called strange because of its odd behavior, later explained by quark theory.

He is best known for his role in the development of heavy quark effective theory (HQET), a mathematical formalism that has allowed physicists to make predictions about otherwise intractable problems in the theory of the strong nuclear interactions.

Aspects of heavy quark theory, by I. Bigi, M. Shifman and N. Uraltsev (Annual Reviews of Nuclear and Particle Science, v 47, 1997, p 591-661)

The quark theory of matter formulated in the 1960's by Dr. Murray Gell-Mann and Dr. George Zweig of the California Institute of Technology has successfully explained many aspects of physics that previously defied understanding.

In later years, when quark theory became established as the standard model of particle physics, the Nobel committee presumably felt they couldn't recognize Zweig as the scientist who first spelled out the theory's implications in detail and suggested that they might be real, without including Gell-Mann again.

At first people were reluctant to identify the three-bodies as quarks, instead preferring Richard Feynman's parton description, but over time the quark theory became accepted (see November Revolution).