Ilya Prigogine

Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (/prioin/;

Russian: , Ilya Romanovich
Prigozhin; 25 January 1917 28 May 2003) was a
Belgian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate noted for
his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and
irreversibility.

Prigogine was rst married to Belgian poet Hlne Jof

(as an author also known as Hlne Prigogine) and in
1945 they had a son Yves. After their divorce, he married Polish-born chemist Maria Prokopowicz (also known
as Maria Prigogine) in 1961. In 1970 they had a son
Pascal.[14] In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who
signed the Humanist Manifesto.[15]

2 Research

Biography

Prigogine is best known for his denition of dissipative

structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far
from equilibrium, a discovery that won him the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry in 1977. In summary, Ilya Prigogine
discovered that importation and dissipation of energy into
chemical systems could reverse the maximization of entropy rule imposed by the second law of thermodynamics.[16]

Prigogine was born in Moscow a few months before the Russian Revolution of 1917, into a Jewish family.[4][5][6][7][8][9] His father, Roman (Ruvim
Abramovich) Prigogine, was a chemical engineer at the
Imperial Moscow Technical School; his mother, Yulia
Vikhman, was a pianist. Because the family was critical
of the new Soviet system, they left Russia in 1921. They
rst went to Germany and in 1929, to Belgium, where Prigogine received Belgian nationality in 1949. His brother
Alexandre (1913-1991) became an ornithologist.[10]

2.1 Dissipative structures theory

Prigogine studied chemistry at the Universit Libre de

Bruxelles, where in 1950, he became professor. In 1959,
he was appointed director of the International Solvay Institute in Brussels, Belgium. In that year, he also started
teaching at the University of Texas at Austin in the United
States, where he later was appointed Regental Professor
and Ashbel Smith Professor of Physics and Chemical Engineering. From 1961 until 1966 he was aliated with
the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago.
In Austin, in 1967, he co-founded the Center for Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, now The Center
for Complex Quantum Systems.[11] In that year, he also
returned to Belgium, where he became director of the
Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics.

Dissipative structure theory led to pioneering research in

self-organizing systems, as well as philosophical inquiries
into the formation of complexity on biological entities and
the quest for a creative and irreversible role of time in the
natural sciences.
With professor Robert Herman, he also developed the basis of the two uid model, a trac model in trac engineering for urban networks, analogous to the two uid
model in classical statistical mechanics.

Prigogines formal concept of self-organization was used

also as a complementary bridge between General
Systems Theory and Thermodynamics, conciliating the
He was a member of numerous scientic organizations, cloudiness of some important systems theory concepts
and received numerous awards, prizes and 53 honorary with scientic rigour.
degrees. In 1955, Ilya Prigogine was awarded the
Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences. For this study in
irreversible thermodynamics, he received the Rumford 2.2 Work on unsolved problems in physics
Medal in 1976, and in 1977, the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry. In 1989, he was awarded the title of Viscount See also: Unsolved problems in physics
in the Belgian nobility by the King of the Belgians. Until
his death, he was president of the International Academy In his later years, his work concentrated on the fundamenof Science, Munich and was in 1997, one of the founders tal role of Indeterminism in nonlinear systems on both
of the International Commission on Distance Educa- the classical and quantum level. Prigogine and coworktion (CODE), a worldwide accreditation agency.[12][13] In ers proposed a Liouville space extension of quantum me1998 he was awarded an honoris causa doctorate by the chanics. A Liouville space is the vector space formed by
UNAM in Mexico City.
the set of (self-adjoint) linear operators, equipped with an
1

3 PUBLICATIONS

inner product, that act on a Hilbert space.[17] There exists tems.

a mapping of each linear operator into Liouville space,
yet not every self-adjoint operator of Liouville space has
a counterpart in Hilbert space, and in this sense Liou- 3 Publications
ville space has a richer structure than Hilbert space.[18]
The Liouville space extension proposal by Prigogine and
Prigogine, I.; Defay, R. (1954). Chemical Thermoco-workers aimed to solve the arrow of time problem of
dynamics. London: Longmans Green and Co.
thermodynamics and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.[19]
Prigogine, Ilya (1957). The Molecular Theory of
Solutions. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing
Prigogine co-authored several books with Isabelle
Company.
Stengers, including The End of Certainty and La Nouvelle
Alliance (Order out of Chaos).

2.3

The End of Certainty

In his 1996 book, La Fin des certitudes, co-authored by

Isabelle Stengers and published in English in 1997 as The
End of Certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature,
Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable
scientic belief. The more we know about our universe,
the more dicult it becomes to believe in determinism.
This is a major departure from the approach of Newton,
Einstein and Schrdinger, all of whom expressed their
theories in terms of deterministic equations. According
to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in
the face of irreversibility and instability.
Prigogine traces the dispute over determinism back to
Darwin, whose attempt to explain individual variability
according to evolving populations inspired Ludwig Boltzmann to explain the behavior of gases in terms of populations of particles rather than individual particles. This
led to the eld of statistical mechanics and the realization that gases undergo irreversible processes. In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible, meaning that they can proceed backward as well as forward
through time. As Prigogine explains, determinism is fundamentally a denial of the arrow of time. With no arrow
of time, there is no longer a privileged moment known
as the present, which follows a determined past and
precedes an undetermined future. All of time is simply
given, with the future as determined or undetermined as
the past. With irreversibility, the arrow of time is reintroduced to physics. Prigogine notes numerous examples
of irreversibility, including diusion, radioactive decay,
solar radiation, weather and the emergence and evolution
of life. Like weather systems, organisms are unstable systems existing far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Instability resists standard deterministic explanation. Instead, due to sensitivity to initial conditions, unstable systems can only be explained statistically, that is, in terms
of probability.
Prigogine asserts that Newtonian physics has now been
extended three times, rst with the use of the wave
function in quantum mechanics, then with the introduction of spacetime in general relativity and nally with the
recognition of indeterminism in the study of unstable sys-

Prigogine, Ilya (1961). Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes (Second ed.). New
York: Interscience. OCLC 219682909.
Glansdor, Paul; Prigogine, I. (1971). Thermodynamics Theory of Structure, Stability and Fluctuations. London: Wiley-Interscience.
Prigogine, Ilya; Herman, R. (1971). Kinetic Theory
of Vehicular Trac. New York: American Elsevier.
ISBN 0-444-00082-8.
Prigogine, Ilya; Nicolis, G. (1977).
SelfOrganization in Non-Equilibrium Systems. Wiley.
ISBN 0-471-02401-5.
Prigogine, Ilya (1980). From Being To Becoming.
Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1107-9.
Prigogine, Ilya; Stengers, Isabelle (1984). Order
out of Chaos: Mans new dialogue with nature.
Flamingo. ISBN 0-00-654115-1.
Prigogine, I. The Behavior of Matter under
Nonequilibrium Conditions: Fundamental Aspects
and Applications in Energy-oriented Problems:
Progress Report for Period September 1984-November 1987, Department of Physics at the University of Texas-Austin, United States Department
of Energy, (7 October 1987).
Prigogine, I. The Behavior of Matter under
Nonequilibrium Conditions: Fundamental Aspects
and Applications: Progress Report, April 15, 1988-April 14, 1989, Center for Studies in Statistical Mathematics at the University of Texas-Austin,
United States Department of Energy, (January
1989).
Prigogine, I. The Behavior of Matter under
Nonequilibrium Conditions: Fundamental Aspects
and Applications: Progress Report for Period August 15, 1989 April 14, 1990, Center for Studies
in Statistical Mechanics at the University of TexasAustin, United States Department of Energy-Oce
of Energy Research (October 1989).
Nicolis, G.; Prigogine, I. (1989). Exploring complexity: An introduction. New York, NY: W. H.
Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1859-6.

3
Prigogine, I. Time, Dynamics and Chaos: Integrating Poincares 'Non-Integrable Systems", Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex
Systems at the University of Texas-Austin, United
States Department of Energy-Oce of Energy Research, Commission of the European Communities
(October 1990).
Prigogine, I. The Behavior of Matter Under
Nonequilibrium Conditions: Fundamental Aspects
and Applications: Progress Report for Period April
15,1990 - April 14, 1991, Center for Studies in
Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems at the
University of Texas-Austin, United States Department of Energy-Oce of Energy Research (December 1990).

[4] Francis Leroy. A century of Nobel Prizes recipients: chemistry, physics, and medicine (p. 80). Books.google.com.
Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[5] Vicomte Ilya Prigogine (Obituary, The Telegraph)".
Telegraph.co.uk. 2003-06-05. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[6] Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp. Systems Thinkers (p. 227).
Books.google.com. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[7] Andrew Robinson. Time and notion. Timeshighereducation.co.uk. 1998-07-17. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[8] Time and Change. Chaosforum.com. 2003-05-28. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[9] Biography of Ilya Prigogine. Pagerankstudio.com. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
[10] Louette, Michel (1992). Obituary: Alexandre Prigogine

Prigogine, Ilya (1993). Chaotic Dynamics and

(1913-1991)". Ibis 134: 8990. doi:10.1111/j.1474Transport in Fluids and Plasmas: Research Trends
919X.1992.tb07238.x.
in Physics Series. New York: American Institute of
[11] Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist dies in Brussels at
Physics. ISBN 0-88318-923-2.
Prigogine, Ilya (1997). The End of Certainty. New
York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-83705-6.
Kondepudi, Dilip; Prigogine, Ilya (1998). Modern
Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative
Structures. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-97394-2.

age 86. Utexas.edu. 2003-05-28. Retrieved 2012-1219.

[12] http://www.ias-icsd.org/history.html
[13] http://www.ias-icsd.org/resources/
ICSD-IAS-Presidium.pdf
[14] Prigogine, Ilya. (2003). Curriculum Vitae of Ilya Pri-

gogine In Is future given. World Scientic.

Prigogine, Ilya (2002). Advances in Chemical
Physics. New York: Wiley InterScience. ISBN 978[15] Notable Signers. Humanism and Its Aspirations. Amer0-471-26431-6. Retrieved 2008-07-29.
ican Humanist Association. Retrieved 4 October 2012.

Editor (with Stuart A. Rice) of the Advances in

Chemical Physics book series published by John
Wiley & Sons (presently over 140 volumes)

See also
Autocatalytic reactions and order creation
List of Jewish Nobel laureates
Systems theory
Process philosophy

Notes

[1] H. Bunke, T. Kanade, H. Noltemeier (ed.), Modelling

and Planning for Sensor Based Intelligent Robot Systems,
World Scientic, 1995, p. 438.
[2] Gunter, P. A. Y. (1991), Bergson and non-linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics: an application of method,
Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 45: 177, pp. 10821.
[3] Michel Serres, Hermes, Johns Hopkins University Press,
1982, p. 135.

[16] Macklem, P. T. (3 April 2008). Emergent phenomena

and the secrets of life. Journal of Applied Physiology 104
(6): 18441846. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00942.2007.
[17] Gregg Jaeger: Quantum Information: An Overview,
Springer, 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-35725-6, Chapter B.3
Lioville space and open quantum systems, p. 248
[18] T. Sida, K. Sait, Si Si (eds.): Quantum Information and
Complexity: Proceedings of the Meijo Winter School, 610
January 2003, World Scientic Publishing, 2004, ISBN
978-981-256-047-6, p. 62
[19] T. Petrosky; I. Prigogine (1997). The Liouville Space
Extension of Quantum Mechanics. Adv. Chem.
Phys. Advances in Chemical Physics 99: 1120.
doi:10.1002/9780470141588.ch1.
ISBN 978-0-47014158-8.

6 References
Karl Grandin, ed. (1977). Ilya Prigogine Autobiography. Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Foundation.
Retrieved 2008-07-24.
Eftekhari, Ali (2003). Obituary - Prof. Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003)" (PDF). Adaptive Behavior 11
(2): 129131.

7
Barbra Rodriguez (2003-05-28). Biography Nobel
Prize-winning physical chemist dies in Brussels at
age 86. University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved
2008-07-29.

External links
Biography and Bibliographic Resources, from the
Oce of Scientic and Technical Information,
United States Department of Energy
Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1977
The Center for Complex Quantum Systems
Emergent computation
Hostile notes on Ilya Prigogine by Cosma Rohilla
Shalizi
Video of Ilya Prigogine talking about complexity on
YouTube
An interview of Ilya Prigogine with Giannis Zisis on
YouTube

EXTERNAL LINKS

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