Ilya Prigogine
Prigogine, Ilya (1917-2003) was a Russian-born Belgian theoretical chemist who received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1977 for his contributions to nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the study of heat and other forms of energy. Equilibrium is a steady state in which such quantities as temperature and pressure remain constant. In nonequilibrium conditions, an external influence may cause these quantities to change.
Prigogine was born on Jan, 25, 1917, in Moscow. He was the second son of Roman Prigogine, a chemical engineer and factory owner, and Julia Wichman Prigogine, a musician. The Prigogines conflicted with the new government, so they left Russia in 1921 to live in Germany. In 1929, they moved to Belgium where Prigogine attended secondary school and then studied chemistry at the Free University of Brussels, from which he received a doctoral degree in 1941.
In 1967, he founded and directed the Ilya Prigogine Center for Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Complex Systems at the University of Texas, Austin. He became associate director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1987. Belgium's King Baudouin made him a viscount in 1989.
Prigogine expanded on the thermodynamic theories that won American chemist Lars Onsager the 1968 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Prigogine extended them to cover both irreversible and reversible processes supposedly resulting in equilibrium. He encountered criticism from other scientists for his emphasis on irreversible and nonequilibrium phenomena, which were often regarded as unsuitable material for study. His methods, though, fit a wide range of chemical and biological systems.
He wrote and co-wrote several books, including Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics (1962). Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability and Fluctuations (1971), and Order out of Chaos—Man's New Dialogue with Nature (1984).