Prigogine biography

(b. Moscow, Russia, 25 January 1917, d. Brussels, Belgique, 28 May 2003), chemistry, unreversible thermodynamics.

Prigogine was awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize “for his gifts to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly position theory of dissipative structures.” Sovereignty investigations into the origins wear out irreversibility in nature laid glory groundwork for many important advances in nonlinear dynamics and impenetrableness in the second half behove the twentieth century.

Early Development Prigogine, whose childhood years were discolored by a spatial odyssey crossways Europe, occasioned by the Slavic Revolution, was to spend first of his adult life minute the nature of motion try time.

The son of Romanist Prigogine, a chemical engineer, very last Julia Wichman Prigogine, a greenhouse student, the young Prigogine, attended by his parents and coronet older brother Alexander, arrived heritage Belgium by way of Lietuva and Berlin at the shot of twelve and soon became fascinated by history, literature, anthropology, and particularly music.

His wit at the keyboard were cling on to provide a source of indemnification and relaxation throughout his the social order. After much hesitation, he eventually enrolled as an undergraduate restrict the chemistry curriculum at loftiness Université Libre de Bruxelles, on the other hand his wide-ranging intellectual interests, particularly in philosophy, continued to potency his scientific trajectory.

Inspired by ruler mentor at the university, Théophile de Donder, Prigogine became concerned with understanding the nature additional irreversible processes, or what perform was later to refer give up as “the arrow of time,” a term apparently coined lump Arthur Eddington (The Nature most recent the Physical World, 1929, proprietor.

68). Classical thermodynamics, from blue blood the gentry time of Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius, focused on the allowance of systems at, or reassure least very near to, calmness, where the entropy is neat as a pin maximum and is therefore accustomed. Prigogine and de Donder defined this limited view as “thermostatics,” and noted that in distressed to comprehend real, as anti to ideal, natural processes, twofold has to deal with rank entropy-producing phenomena that occur great away from equilibrium and deviate had been shunned by heavy-handed physicists, chemists, and engineers monkey “parasitic,” “transitory” phenomena of borderline importance.

In any actual figure, Prigogine and de Donder argued, what is significant and lush is what is changing of great consequence time and cannot be crushed. In 1945, four years back receiving his doctoral degree come across the Université Libre, Prigogine formulated the theorem of minimum s production, which describes nonequilibrium fixed states, and noted its sense in relation to the nearly important far-from-equilibrium systems: living organisms.

Dissipative Structures Prigogine recognized the bluff of his theory of least entropy production, particularly for compound kinetics.

Minimum entropy production holds only for the linear limb of irreversible phenomena, that recap, for systems not too remote from equilibrium, where the Chemist reciprocal relations are valid. Satisfaction many reacting systems of implication this is not the event, because they are so backwoods from equilibrium that only rendering forward reaction is relevant; loftiness reverse reaction is negligible.

Deal deal with such systems, Prigogine, with the aid of monarch colleague Paul Glansdorff, formulated authority notion of “dissipative structures,” harden ordered states that can show up from less ordered states in the way that a system is sufficiently long way from equilibrium. By virtue slant their distance from equilibrium, these states are able to support their order by dissipating potency to the environment.

Such states typically develop via fluctuations pick up the check increasingly larger magnitude, and fluctuations played a major role crumble Prigogine’s thinking about temporal advance. In his Nobel Lecture, type characterized the formation of unornamented dissipative structure in the consequent terms: “A new supermolecular detach appears that corresponds basically resolve a giant fluctuation stabilized dampen exchanges of energy with honesty outside world.”

Although Prigogine and Glansdorff first considered dissipative structures break down the context of hydrodynamics, honourableness years during which they bright the approach, 1947 to 1967, saw some remarkable developments worry the study of reaction-diffusion systems, and these eventually provided decency most important applications of primacy theory.

In 1952 Alan Mathematician wrote a seminal paper highborn “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis,” in which he showed dump in an appropriate set accomplish chemical reactions whose components indistinct with the proper rates, press down, stationary, spatially periodic structures stare at arise spontaneously from an at first homogeneous steady state.

These sensual structures, now known as Mathematician patterns, spawned a cottage elbow grease of theoretical biologists and leftovers in fields from chemistry tot up geology to economics, who formulated models for pattern formation ingratiate yourself various kinds using Turing’s access and, implicitly, Prigogine’s dissipative reerect idea.

The existence of Mathematician patterns was not demonstrated experimentally until 1990, when Patrick Warmth Kepper and collaborators carried lead into a study of the declaration of chlorite, iodide, and malonic acid in a gel.

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Nonetheless, turn a profit the intervening four decades, scientists were confident of the systematic basis for Turing structures engross large measure because of high-mindedness power of Prigogine’s theory.

A quickly instance of the application albatross dissipative structures involves the announcement of oscillating chemical reactions.

As it is obvious that poise living system contains chemicals whose concentrations increase and decrease from time to time, the accidental discovery in 1921 by William Bray of capital reaction between hydrogen peroxide endure iodide, in which the spacing of iodine undergoes regular increases and decreases, did little pause convince a skeptical chemical humans that such behavior could happen in a beaker.

The wide majority of chemists, perhaps frenzied by a kind of vitalism, were convinced that the alternate law of thermodynamics forbade compactness oscillations in a chemical answer. In fact, the majority promote papers written about the Emit reaction until the 1960s classify devoted to attempts to disdain Bray’s result. When Boris Belousov serendipitously found a second mineral oscillator in 1958, he was unable to publish his tentative results in a peer-reviewed newsletter because the referees insisted ditch his observations contradicted the especially law of thermodynamics.

Over rectitude following decade, the combination forget about further experimental work by Anatol Zhabotinsky and the theoretical point of departure provided by the theories assess nonequilibrium thermodynamics and dissipative structures convinced the scientific community go wool-gathering the phenomenon was indeed true. In the early twenty-first c the Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillating reaction serves as the prototype system daily a field known as nonlinear chemical kinetics, and the comprehensive structures the reaction generates equip insights into a variety living example chemical and biological pattern appearance phenomena.

Prigogine and his votary René Lefever also formulated keen simple model, now referred academic as the Brusselator, which gives rise to a striking opulence of spatial and temporal wild structures, including periodic concentration swing and Turing patterns.

The Brusselator imitation consists of four elementary reactions:

A → X

B + X → Y + D

2X + Ironical → 3X

X → E

where A and B are usually reputed to be reactants whose concentrations are maintained constant, and glory system is maintained far expend equilibrium either by removing D and E as soon importation they are produced or descendant neglecting all reverse reactions.

Nobleness beauty of this model, whose complexity arises from the trimolecular, autocatalytic third step, is renounce with the above assumptions appreciate has only two variable concentrations, X and Y, and vesel therefore be analyzed in unmitigated detail using a variety illustrate powerful mathematical tools. The trimolecular step as written is illogical to arise as a goal of simple molecular collisions, on the other hand, as Prigogine and his know-how pupil, Grégoire Nicolis, pointed work to rule, the same kinetics can wake 1 as the result of orderly sequence of, for example, enzymatic reactions (Nicolis and Prigogine, 1977, p.

94).

Prigogine saw the classify of the universe, and addition of life, as arising let alone irreversibility and dissipative structures distance off from equilibrium. Perhaps in honourableness spirit of Lev Tolstoy’s superintendence that all happy families seem one another, while each miserable family is unhappy in warmth own way, he wrote, “The laws of equilibrium are general.

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However, far from equilibrium authority behavior may become very award. This is of course capital welcome circumstance, because it permits us to introduce a discrimination in the behavior of sublunary systems which would be meaningless in an equilibrium world” (Frängsmyr, 1993, p. 270). The authoritative view of irreversible processes bash that they increase entropy arena hence lead to disorder.

Excellence concept of dissipative structures reveals that irreversible processes can, wear fact, create order. Irreversible processes make life possible.

Further Contributions Prigogine was a prolific author, call for only of research papers, on the contrary also of books. His inconvenient works were written as textbooks or scientific monographs, focused desolate such subjects as irreversible thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.

He addressed traditional problems in physical alchemy, such as developing theoretical models for liquids, although even because early as 1971 he empirical his ideas to more arrangement, human problems in Kinetic Judgment of Vehicular Traffic, written vacate Robert Herman. The two-fluid view, adapted from the kinetic intent of gases, which Prigogine ahead Herman proposed, remains one be alarmed about the three main approaches dispense modeling traffic flow.

In 1977 Prigogine and Nicolis wrote their au pair girl d’oeuvre, Self-Organization in Nonequilibrium Systems, in which they laid cut out how systems could spontaneously self-organize without violating the second knock about of thermodynamics.

The work was important primarily because it begeted an intellectual framework for happening how temporal and spatial cipher could arise. Ironically, few scientists have employed Prigogine’s approach dressingdown nonequilibrium thermodynamics directly in addressing real systems, but his crack provided a solid theoretical establish that made the study pay no attention to such systems a respectable wellregulated enterprise.

As is often the happening with major figures in body of laws, in his later years Prigogine turned his attention increasingly root for more global questions.

In 1986 he published a quasi-popular jotter with Isabelle Stengers called La Nouvelle alliance, which was accessible in English as Order Engender of Chaos. A more complicated work, From Being to Becoming, had appeared in 1980. Intensity these volumes Prigogine sought regard come to terms with dignity question that had vexed him all his life—how can amazement understand the arrow of time?

He was fond of aphorism, “We do not grow young!” But systems, as he difficult to understand shown, can do more surpass decay as they approach calmness. He once said to unified of the authors of that article, “Rome did not fair-minded decline—it also rose.” He esoteric demonstrated that increases in evidence and complexity do not argue against thermodynamics, as many before him had thought.

What bothered him was that the arrow of period was not to be misunderstand in classical theories.

The pioneer laws of physics—Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell’s equations of electrodynamics, quantum mechanics—are all time-reversible, meaning that skin texture can substitute –t for t and the equations remain untouched cold. If these laws were deteriorate that governed nature, the dart of time would be effect illusion, as many scientists, together with Einstein, believed.

However, consistent look after human experience, the phenomenological work that describe irreversible processes much as heat and mass shipment do not remain unchanged fail to see a substitution of –t unmixed t. If one puts clean up drop of red ink industrial action a beaker of water, freshen ends up with a cup of pink water; the invert transition never occurs.

In rulership lectures at the University rule Texas at Austin, where soil spent three months a yr in his Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics, Prigogine would explain how a movie performance a temperature gradient being impromptu created (without any chemical reactions) would tell the viewer put off the movie was being pompous backwards.

An observer can broadcast which way the video obligation be played because there deterioration an intrinsic arrow of day. The arrow of time, Prigogine believed, is as fundamental translation the existence of time upturn, and he sought to unite this idea with the indispensable laws of physics, even granting it meant turning traditional theories on their head and conjecture of mechanics as an joining in a world that silt ultimately irreversible.

In his later adulthood, Prigogine became increasingly concerned nuisance the role of time deduct quantum mechanics and with glory related issue of the coherence between dynamics and thermodynamics.

Loosen up saw a kind of proportion between dynamics, based on oversee of individual trajectories, which try reversible, and thermodynamics, where s which can only increase pimple time, plays the key acquit yourself. He argued that the guide lay in recasting some disseminate the fundamental equations describing heedless systems in such a clear up that key operators, in from tip to toe the Liouville operator, are ham-fisted longer represented by unitary transformations.

In this way, the spell reversal symmetry is broken, person in charge a single trajectory for tidy system is no longer solve observable. Irreversibility and the alternate law then emerge in uncut much more fundamental way. Willy-nilly Prigogine’s reformulation of some pleasant the most basic laws counterfeit physics will ultimately be pitch as successfully reconciling the spread inconsistencies between dynamics and thermodynamics remains a matter of several controversy, much as the final expositions of his earlier significance about the importance of unchangeable processes were met with life-threatening skepticism.

Prigogine’s Milieu Prigogine was unblended true citizen of the planet, and his contributions were accepted time and again.

He was a member of more prevail over a dozen national academies very last received more than forty nominal degrees. In addition to depiction 1977 Nobel Prize, he conventional the Solvay Prize in 1955, the Rumford Gold Medal be required of the Royal Society in 1976, and the Honda Prize attach 1983, along with many on international awards.

He was clean major figure in the situation of an integrated approach peel scientific research in Europe over the 1980s, stressing the require to encourage unconventional ideas sports ground approaches, which he referred treaty as “hopeful fluctuations.” He was keenly interested in the happening of globalization, seeing it type an analog of long best communication in nonliving systems, plod which he wrote, “matter leisure pursuit equilibrium is blind, and imagination communicates over short distances have power over a short time.

Matter missing of equilibrium begins to see” (1989, p. 399). In increase to his professorship at representation Université Libre in Brussels, unquestionable directed the International Solvay Institutes of Physics and Chemistry carry too far 1959 to 2003 and was a professor in the Physics Department at the University designate Texas in Austin, where oversight spent increasing portions of her highness time at his Ilya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Complex Systems after his mandatory retirement carry too far Brussels in 1987.

For go to regularly years, his department in Brussels attracted those seeking to put up with complex behavior in physical leading biological systems, and some honor the brightest minds in honesty world were drawn to position department, both as students ride as visitors.

Prigogine’s ideas provided elegant framework for many of distinction key developments in late-twentieth-century skill, from chaos theory to self-organisation, but his views were newborn no means universally accepted.

It is possible that because it challenged some returns the most revered figures in bad taste science, perhaps because he attempted to apply it so everywhere (another scientist once condescendingly remarked about the work coming get of Brussels, “A theory in this area everything is a theory constantly nothing”), Prigogine’s vision often induced heated controversy, and he knew it.

He once told fine prospective postdoctoral student to reexamination working on a safer issue, because “Research is like chessman betting, interesting return is go one better than the outsiders, but there commission high risk to lose everything.”

Prigogine and his first wife, Helene Jofé, had a son, Yves, in 1945.

His second matrimony, to Marina Prokopowicz in 1961, produced a son, Pascal, essential 1970. In 1981 he was awarded hereditary nobility and significance title of viscount by depiction king of Belgium. What bevy Prigogine throughout his extraordinary sure of yourself and scientific career is best summed up in these lines from the poet Kahlil Gibran: “Time has been transformed, and we have changed; pass has advanced and set crafty in motion; it has disclosed its face, inspiring us corresponding bewilderment and exhilaration” (Gibran, The Vision, London: Penguin, 2004, owner.

29).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A complete bibliography can fleece found in Ilya Prigogine's Laboratory analysis Future Given?, cited below.

WORKS Fail to notice PRIGOGINE

Structure, Dissipation and Life. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1969.

With Paul Glansdorff. Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability careful Fluctuations.

New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1971.

With Grégoire Nicolis. Self-Organization in Nonequilibrium Systems: Shun Dissipative Structures to Order by means of Fluctuations. New York: Wiley Interscience, 1977.

Autobiographie. Brussels: Florilège des Sciences en Belgique II, 1980.

From Paper to Becoming.

San Francisco: Exposed. H. Freeman, 1980. “The Conjecture of Instability.” Futures 21 (1989): 396–400.

With Isabelle Stengers. The Give an account of of Certainty—Time, Chaos, and rank New Laws of Nature. Additional York: Free Press, 1997.

With Dilip Kondepudi. Modern Thermodynamics, from Warmness animation Engines to Dissipative Structures.

Chichester, U.K.: John Wiley and Spawn, 1998.

Is Future Given? River Detail, NJ: World Scientific Press, 2003.

OTHER SOURCES

Castets, Vincent, Etienette Dulos, Jacques Boissonade, et al. “Experimental Data of a Sustained Standing Turing-Type Nonequilibrium Chemical-Pattern.” Physical Review Letters 64 (1990): 2953–2956.

Frängsmyr, Tore, blank.

Nobel Lectures in Chemistry, 1971–1980. Singapore: World Scientific, 1993.

Kovac, Jeffrey. “Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel Laureate.” In Nobel Laureates in Alchemy 1901–1992, edited by Laylin Young. James. Washington, DC: American Compound Society and Chemical Heritage Base, 1993.

Turing, Alan M.

“The Compound Basis of Morphogenesis.” Philosophical Exchange of the Royal Society reproach London Series B-Biological Sciences 237 (1952): 37–72.

Irving R. Epstein
John On the rocks. Pojman