Quark!

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann’s exploration of the subatomic realm led him to surmise that what were previously thought of as basic particles — electron, proton and neutron — might be composed of still smaller particles combined in unique and specific ways. He hypothesized these particles and some of their qualities in 1964, as did another physicist working independently, George Zweig. In 1968, experiments at the Stanford Linear Acceleration Center proved the particles exist and in 1969 Gell-Mann won the Nobel Prize.

But in some ways even more important than his discovery of these little bits was his naming of them. Because of Murray Gell-Mann, we will always have a use for the letter Q in Scrabble or Words With Friends, because he’s the one who named them quarks.