Ilya Prigogine
Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (/prɪˈɡoʊʒiːn/; Russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 25 January [O.S. 12 January] 1917 – 28 May 2003) was a Belgian physical chemist of Russian-Jewish origin, noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility.
Ilya Prigogine
28 May 2003 (aged 86)
Belgian (1949—2003)
Hélène Jofé (m. 1945; son Yves Prigogine) Maria Prokopowicz (m. 1961; son Pascal Prigogine)
Alexandre Prigogine (brother)
Francqui Prize (1955)
Rumford Medal (1976)
Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1977)
Free University of Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles
International Solvay Institute
University of Texas, Austin
University of Chicago
Prigogine's work most notably earned him the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as well as the Francqui Prize in 1955 and the Rumford Medal in 1976.
Biography[edit]
Early life and studies[edit]
Prigogine was born in Moscow a few months before the October Revolution of 1917, into a Jewish family.[1] His father, Ruvim (Roman) Abramovich Prigogine, was a chemical engineer who studied at the Imperial Moscow Technical School and owned a soap factory; his mother, Yulia Vikhman, was a pianist who attended the Moscow Conservatory. In 1921, the factory having been nationalized by the new Soviet regime and the feeling of insecurity rising amidst the civil war, the family left Russia. After a brief period in Lithuania, they went to Germany and settled in Berlin; 8 years later, due to the poor economic situation and the creeping emergence of Nazism, they moved on to Brussels, where Prigogine received Belgian nationality in 1949. His brother Alexandre (1913–1991) became an ornithologist.[2]
As a teenager, Prigogine was interested in music, history and archeology. He graduated from the Athenée d'Ixelles in 1935, majoring in Greek and Latin. His parents encouraged him to become a lawyer, and he initially enrolled in law studies at the Free University of Brussels. At that time he developed an interest in psychology and the study of behavior; in turn, reading about these subjects triggered an interest in chemistry, as chemical processes impact the mind and body; this also triggered a more fundamental interest in physics, as they explain chemistry. He ended up dropping out from the law faculty.[3]
Prigogine afterwards simultaneously enrolled in chemistry and physics at the Free University of Brussels, something he achieved with "uncommon success"; he earned the equivalent of a Master's degree in both disciplines in 1939, and a PhD in chemistry in 1941 under Théophile de Donder.[3][4]
Early career, World War II[edit]
He started his research career under the German occupation of Belgium. From 1940 onwards he gave clandestine lectures to students. In 1941, the university formally closed to protest the forced appointment of Flemish pro-Nazi New Order professors by the occupiers;[5] he continued giving clandestine lectures until the Liberation of Belgium in 1944. During that time window he also published 21 articles. In 1943, Prigogine and his future wife Hélène Jofé were arrested by the Germans; after multiple interventions including by the Queen Elisabeth, they were eventually released a couple of weeks later.[3]
Later career[edit]
In 1951, he became a full professor at his alma mater; at 34 years old, he was the youngest ever full professor at the science faculty in Brussels.[3] 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 affiliated with the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago and was a visiting professor at Northwestern University.[6][7] In Austin, in 1967, he co-founded the Center for Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, now the Center for Complex Quantum Systems.[8] In that year, he also returned to Belgium, where he became director of the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics.
He was a member of numerous scientific organizations, and received numerous awards, prizes and 53 honorary degrees. In 1955, Prigogine was awarded the Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences. For his study in irreversible thermodynamics, he received the Rumford Medal in 1976, and in 1977, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures". In 1989, he was awarded the title of viscount in the Belgian nobility by the King of the Belgians. Until his death, he was president of the International Academy of Science, Munich and was in 1997, one of the founders of the International Commission on Distance Education (CODE), a worldwide accreditation agency.[9][10] Prigogine received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1985[11] and in 1998 he was awarded an honoris causa doctorate by the UNAM in Mexico City.
Prigogine was first married to Belgian poet Hélène Jofé (as an author also known as Hélène 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.[12]
In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[13]
Ilya Prigogine Prize for Thermodynamics[edit]
The Ilya Prigogine Prize for Thermodynamics was initialized in 2001 and patronized by Ilya Prigogine himself until his death in 2003. It is awarded on a biennial basis during the Joint European Thermodynamics Conference (JETC) and considers all branches of thermodynamics (applied, theoretical, and experimental as well as quantum thermodynamics and classical thermodynamics).