 Between 1963 and 1966, 3 people, Susumu Okubo, George Zweig and Jugoro Iizuka, each independently proposed a rule to account for the observed suppression of the 3 pion decay.This rule is now known as the OZI rule and is also the currently accepted explanation for the unusually long lifetimes of the and mesons.Namely, on average they last and respectively.