Ilya Prigozhin Belgian physicist and physical chemist. Date of Birth: 25.01.1917 Country: Belgium

Biography of Ilya Prigogine

Ilya Prigogine was a Belgian physicist and physical chemist. He was born into a family of chemical engineers and later became a renowned scientist in his own right. In 1921, Prigogine and his family left Russia and settled first in Germany and then in Belgium in 1929.

Prigogine received his primary and secondary education in schools in Berlin and Brussels. He went on to study at the Free University of Brussels, where he completed his university education. After graduating in 1942, he began working at the same university and defended his doctoral dissertation in 1945. In 1947, he became a professor.

One of the most influential figures in Prigogine's career was Professor Théophile de Donder, the founder of the Brussels School of Thermodynamics and one of the creators of the theory of irreversible non-equilibrium systems. Under de Donder's guidance, Prigogine developed a keen interest in thermodynamics of open systems. He made significant contributions to the phenomenological theory of irreversible processes and the thermodynamics of nonlinear irreversible processes.

In 1947, Prigogine introduced the concept of entropy production and entropy flow. He formulated the so-called local formulation of the second law of thermodynamics and proposed the principle of local equilibrium. He demonstrated that in a stationary state, the rate of entropy production in a thermodynamic system is minimized (Prigogine's theorem), and entropy production for irreversible processes in an open system tends towards a minimum (Prigogine's criterion).

To explain the behavior of systems far from equilibrium, Prigogine formulated the theory of dissipative structures. He believed that non-equilibrium could be a source of order and described dissipative structures using a mathematical model with time-dependent nonlinear functions. These functions characterized a system's ability to exchange matter and energy with its surroundings and spontaneously stabilize itself. Prigogine's ideas found application in chemistry and biology to explain oscillating chemical reactions (such as the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction) and embryonic development.

From 1962, Prigogine served as the director of the International Institute of Physics and Chemistry in Brussels. In 1967, he was appointed as the director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics at the University of Texas at Austin. He continued his work in both Brussels and Austin.

In recognition of his groundbreaking contributions, Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 "for his work on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, and especially for his formulation of the theory of dissipative structures." In addition to the Nobel Prize, Prigogine received various other accolades, including the Solve Award (1965), the Arrhenius Medal (1969), and the Rumford Medal (1976).