We now know that proton and neutron 6 are not the smallest particles either, they are both made of more fundamental particle quarks. And many people don't know that it was physicist Gell-Mann who proposed the quark model!
Gell-Mann (1929–2019) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969.
Hadron quark model
In 1964, Gell-Mann proposed the hadron quark model. He argues that protons and neutrons are made up of more elementary particle quarks with fractional charges such as +2/3, -1/3. Quarks follow a principle called the Quark Taboo, which cannot exist alone, but can only be composed of several other particles together, such as protons and neutrons are all made up of three quarks.
Later, scientists have discovered a total of six quarks, namely upper and lower quarks, top quarks and bottom quarks, cannabis quarks and odd quarks, and six corresponding antiquarks. Each quark has three more colors, red, green, and blue, so that there are 36 different quarks in total. (The color we're talking about here isn't the color we see, it's a way to differentiate quarks.) ）
Conserved numbers of singular numbers
In the 1950s, scientists discovered mesons whose mass was between protons and electrons, and later superons, which produced fast and disappeared slowly. At first, people could not explain them, but Gell-Mann introduced a new kind of quantum number, the odd number, and proposed the law of conservation of the odd numbers, which successfully explained the properties of these particles, which we also called strange particles.
In 1984, Gell-Mann, along with several other Nobel laureates, initiated the establishment of the Santa Fe Institute to conduct complex research in multiple disciplines, an institute without walls that carried out extensive international exchanges.
Gell-Mann was knowledgeable and erudite, spoke six or seven languages, had a handy grasp of classic ancient books, and was very expert in the classification of birds. He is a strong advocate for the protection of wildlife, the protection of the environment and the protection of cultural diversity.