Ilya Prigogine

Born on 25 January 1917, Ilya Prigogine was a Nobel Prize–winning physical chemist best known for his work on nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Although Prigogine was born in Moscow, his family was forced to flee Russia in 1921 because of political unrest following the Russian Revolution. After living for a time in Germany, the family settled in 1929 in Belgium, where Prigogine would eventually attain citizenship. As a student, Prigogine excelled in many subjects, including music, and was a talented pianist. He chose to study chemistry at the Free University of Brussels, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1939 and PhD in 1941. He remained at the university to continue his research on thermodynamics. Over his career, Prigogine focused on a number of topics, notably the role of time in the physical sciences and biology as well as the second law of thermodynamics and its application to complex systems . He also contributed significantly to the understanding of dissipative structures and irreversible processes. In 1959 he became director of the International Solvay Institute for Physics and Chemistry in Brussels, a position he retained for the rest of his life. In 1967 he also joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded the Center for Statistical Mechanics (later renamed the Ilya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems and now the Center for Complex Quantum Systems ). Besides being awarded the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Prigogine received many other awards, such as the French Medaille d’Or and the Japanese Imperial Order of the Rising Sun. He held 53 honorary degrees, belonged to 64 national and professional organizations, and authored 20 books and almost 1000 research articles. Prigogine died in Brussels in 2003 at age 86; theoretical chemist Stuart Rice wrote the obituary in Physics Today. (Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection)

Date in History: 25 January 1917