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A few years later, he devised a scheme to codify particles, grouping all those known into eight families — the Eightfold Way, he named it in joking homage to Buddhism.

Over lunch, his host Robert Serber asked Gell-Mann if the particles of the Eightfold Way were formed by mixing and matching subunits.

It’s not hard to show Gell-Mann’s eightfold way pictures, and to explain how the particles in them can be made from quarks.

The rules classified subatomic particles called hadrons into eight groups, a scheme he named the eightfold way in a reference to Buddhist philosophy.

He called his method the “eightfold way” after the Buddhist Eightfold Path to enlightenment.