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Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel-winning physicist who brought order to the universe by helping discover and classify subatomic particles, has died. He was 89. Gell-Mann died on Friday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His death was confirmed by the Santa Fe Institute, where he held the title of distinguished fellow, and the California Institute of Technology, where he taught for decades. The cause was not disclosed. Gell-Mann transformed physics by devising a method for sorting subatomic particles into simple groups of eight, based on electric charge, spin and other characteristics. He called his method the “eightfold way” after...

It was at Caltech that Gell-Mann helped to lay the foundations for our understanding of the components that make up matter. He drafted a blueprint of subatomic physics that he called the Eightfold Way. At the time, physicists understood that atoms are constructed from protons and neutrons, but they had also found many other mysterious particles. The Eightfold Way made sense of this baffling menagerie, finding within it places for particles never even imagined. The work was so important that it netted Gell-Mann a Nobel Prize in 1969. In 1984 Gell-Mann pursued his dream of working in other fields by...