Born on New York's Lower East Side, Gell-Man was quickly recognized as a child prodigy. He entered Yale at the age of 15, and by the time he was 23 he had ignited an intellectual revolution, laying bare in a succession of brilliant papers the strange beauty of the minute particles that constitute the ultimate components of physical reality.

Johnson also shows us the precocious polymath holding his own with giants like Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Richard Feynman -- Gell-Mann's favorite intellectual sparring partner and sometimes antagonistic rival. We see Gell-Mann the self-taught linguist (who couldn't resist correcting visitors on the pronunciations of their own names); Gell-Man bird-watcher and amateur archeologist; Gell-Man the Aspen socialite, world traveler, and environmental crusader.

We watch him making his breakthroughs, his abrasive, competitive drive leaving behind a growing trail of enemies. The early death of his wife and the loss of his daughter to a Marxist cult shook him to his foundations, causing him to rethink what is most important about being alive. He turned his sights from the physics of simple particles, like quarks, to the question of how complex phenomena like life can be understoodscientifically.

George Johnson's informed and insightful biography goes far in helping us understand the complexities of both the man and the science in which he has loomed so large.