Gell-Mann ignored received wisdom when he formulated his 'eight-fold way'. Video: The Newton Channel

Murray Gell-Mann clearly has a flair for names. The patterns of particle masses led to his "eight-fold way", and the word quark is supposed to sound a bit like a duck – it is pronounced "kwork". But the spelling comes from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, where it rhymes with Mark.

In his book The Quark and Jaguar he has a go at justifying this, but I'm not convinced.

I am very convinced by his lucid description of how unnecessary concepts get in the way, and how ditching "what everybody knows" can lead to sudden progress.

Of course, for all of you out there with budding new theories, this is only true if the data back you up.

The data backed up Gell-Mann spectacularly: his quarks (and the gluons they exchange) lie behind all the jets we are seeing now at the LHC.