Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) was a Russian-born Belgian physical chemist. This winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is celebrated for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.
Born in Moscow, Russia, Prigogine and his family fled to Western Europe when the Bolsheviks began to target industrialists. Prigogine moved to Belgium at the age of twelve. He was educated at the Free University of Brussels, where he held a chair of chemistry 1951–87 and became an emeritus professor. From 1967 until his death, he was director of the Ilya Prigogine Center for Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, and Complex Systems at the University of Texas. From 1987 associate director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.
Following the pioneering work of the physical chemist Lars Onsager, Prigogine continued developing the thermodynamics of irreversible processes and discovered how to treat systems far from equilibrium. His methods apply to a wide range of chemical and biological systems. Renowned as the ‘grandfather of chaos theory,’ he helped shape approaches to various disciplines, from evolution studies to traffic management.
Prigogine’s works include 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.)
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The irreversibility [of time] is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos.
—Ilya Prigogine
Topics: Time
Whatever we call reality, it is revealed to us only through the active construction in which we participate.
—Ilya Prigogine
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