Ilya Prigogine facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ilya Prigogine
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Prigogine in 1977
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Ilya Romanovich Prigogine
25 January 1917 |
| Died | 28 May 2003 (aged 86) Brussels, Belgium
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| Nationality | Belgian (1949—2003) |
| Alma mater | Free University of Brussels |
| Known for | Dissipative structures Brusselator Non-equilibrium thermodynamics |
| Spouse(s) | Hélène Jofé (m. 1945; son Yves Prigogine) Maria Prokopowicz (m. 1961; son Pascal Prigogine) |
| Awards | Francqui Prize (1955) Rumford Medal (1976) Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1977) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry Physics |
| Institutions | Free University of Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles International Solvay Institute University of Texas, Austin |
| Doctoral advisor | Théophile de Donder |
| Doctoral students |
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| Influences | Ludwig Boltzmann Alan Turing Henri Bergson Michel Serres |
| Influenced | Yves Pomeau, Isabelle Stengers, Immanuel Wallerstein, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari |
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (born January 25, 1917 – died May 28, 2003) was a famous Russian-born Belgian scientist. He was a physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize for his important work. He is best known for his ideas about "dissipative structures" and how complex systems work. He also studied how things change over time in a way that cannot be reversed.
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The Life of Ilya Prigogine
Ilya Prigogine was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1917. This was just a few months before the big Russian Revolution. His family was Jewish. His father, Ruvim Abramovich Prigogine, was a chemical engineer. His mother, Yulia Vikhman, was a talented pianist.
Moving from Russia
Because his family did not agree with the new Soviet government, they left Russia in 1921. They first moved to Germany. Then, in 1929, they moved to Belgium. Ilya Prigogine became a Belgian citizen in 1949. His brother, Alexandre, became a well-known expert on birds.
Education and Teaching Career
Ilya Prigogine studied chemistry at the Free University of Brussels. He became a professor there in 1950. In 1959, he was made director of the International Solvay Institute in Brussels.
That same year, he also started teaching in the United States. He taught at the University of Texas at Austin. He later became a very important professor there. He also taught at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. In 1967, he helped start a research center in Austin. He also returned to Belgium to lead another research center.
Awards and Recognition
Prigogine was part of many scientific groups. He received many awards and honorary degrees. In 1955, he won the Francqui Prize. This was for his excellent work in exact sciences.
He received the Rumford Medal in 1976 for his studies on how things change in a way that cannot be reversed. In 1977, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This was a huge honor for his scientific discoveries. In 1989, the King of the Belgians gave him the special title of viscount. This is a high rank in the Belgian nobility.
Until his death, he was the president of the International Academy of Science in Munich. He also helped start a worldwide education agency in 1997.
Prigogine's Scientific Discoveries
Ilya Prigogine is famous for his work on "dissipative structures." These are systems that can keep themselves organized. They do this by taking in energy and then releasing it. This discovery helped him win the Nobel Prize in 1977.
Understanding Dissipative Structures
Prigogine found that when energy goes into and out of chemical systems, new structures can appear. These are called dissipative structures. They form because the system reorganizes itself from within. He showed how these structures connect to ideas like the Rayleigh-Bénard instability. This is where patterns form in a heated liquid. He also linked them to the Turing mechanism, which explains how patterns form in nature.
His theory of dissipative structures led to new research. This research looked at how systems can organize themselves. It also explored how time plays a creative role in nature. This means that time doesn't just pass; it helps create new things.
Work on Complex Systems
Prigogine also worked on other complex problems in science. With Professor Robert Herman, he created a model for traffic flow in cities. This model helps understand how cars move in networks. It was similar to models used in physics for how fluids behave.
His ideas about self-organization helped connect different scientific fields. They linked General Systems Theory with thermodynamics. This made some ideas in systems theory more scientifically clear.
The End of Certainty
In his 1996 book, The End of Certainty, Prigogine argued that the idea of everything being "determined" is no longer true in science. He wrote that the more we learn about the universe, the harder it is to believe that everything is set in stone.
This was a big change from earlier scientists like Newton and Einstein. They believed that everything could be predicted using equations. Prigogine said that this idea of "determinism" doesn't work when things are irreversible or unstable.
Time and Change
Prigogine explained that in older physics, processes could go backward or forward in time. This meant there was no special "present" moment. But with irreversibility, time has a clear direction, like an "arrow."
He gave many examples of things that are irreversible. These include diffusion (like a drop of ink spreading in water), radioactive decay, and even the growth of life. He said that living things, like weather systems, are unstable. They are always changing and cannot be fully predicted. Instead, we can only understand them using probability.
Prigogine believed that Newtonian physics has been expanded three times. First, with spacetime in general relativity. Second, with wave functions in quantum mechanics. And third, with the discovery of unpredictability in unstable systems, which is called chaos theory.
The Ilya Prigogine Prize
The Ilya Prigogine Prize for Thermodynamics was started in 2001. Ilya Prigogine himself supported it until he passed away in 2003. This prize is given out every two years. It honors new discoveries in all areas of thermodynamics.
See also
- Autocatalytic reactions and order creation
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
- Systems theory
- Prigogine's theorem
- Process philosophy
