PRIGOGINE, Ilya 1917-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 25, 1917, in Moscow, Russia; died May 28, 2003, in Brussels, Belgium. Scientist, educator, and author. One of the most respected scientists of the twentieth century, Prigogine was a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist who developed new theories about thermodynamics and the nature of time. Born just before the Russian Revolution, his parents took him out of the country as a boy and moved the family to Belgium. At the University of Brussels he earned M.Sc. degrees in chemistry and physics in 1939 and a Ph.D. in 1941. He remained at his alma mater as a professor, teaching there until his retirement in 1987; he was also the director of the Ilya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Complex Systems at the University of Texas at Austin and of the International Solvay Institutes of Physics and Chemistry. Through work done in the 1940s Prigogine turned the study of thermodynamics—a field most scientists had lost interest in because they believed there was nothing new to learn about its principles—into a scientific discipline focusing on the way matter changes and is organized, or disorganized, over time. He did this by building on the ideas of his mentor Théophile de Donder and applying them to macroscopic systems to predict how these systems will change when not in a state of equilibrium. By the mid-1960s Prigogine realized that, even in states of apparent quiescence, systems still seem to resist settling into equilibrium. He began to draw parallels between thermodynamics and not only to physical but also biological sciences, and showed how organized structures such as biological systems can become more complex over time, rather than dissipating through entropy as the second law of thermodynamics would predict. In the mid-1960s and 1970s he also turned more attention to microscopic-level dynamics and developed formulas for predicting probabilities within systems. This led, in turn, to his ideas about the irreversibility of certain changes in systems, which helped explain why time flows in only one direction. Prigogine's work in complex systems has had many applications in the real world, including studies ranging from ecology to urban planning. His thoughts on these and other subjects are set down in his many books, including Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics (1962), Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability, and Fluctuations (1971), written with Paul Glansdorff, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences (1980), and Order out of Chaos (1983), written with I. Stengers. For his groundbreaking work and agile thinking, Prigogine became known to his colleagues as the "poet of thermodynamics." He received many awards and honors for his work, including the 1965 Solvay prize, the 1976 Rumford Gold Medal, the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry, and the 1983 Honda prize, as well as more than forty honorary degrees.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Writers Directory, 18th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2003.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2003, p. B13.

New York Times, May 30, 2003, p. A27.

Times (London, England), June 19, 2003.

Washington Post, May 31, 2003, p. B6.