Speaking of complexity............. Ilya Prigogine, 86, Nobelist For Study of Complexity, Dies 30 May 2003 The New York Times Dr. Ilya Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977 for insights into how life could arise in apparent defiance of the classical laws of physics, died on Wednesday in Brussels. He was 86. The second law of thermodynamics states that in any isolated physical system, order inevitably dissolves into decay. But Dr. Prigogine showed that in a system powered by an energy source -- the Earth bathed in light and heat from the Sun, for example -- structures can evolve and become more complex. ''It showed a mechanism by which life could exist in the physical world,'' said Dr. Linda E. Reichl, director of the research center at the University of Texas at Austin that is named after Dr. Prigogine. Dr. Prigogine (pronounced PRIG-uh-gene) split much of his academic career between the University of Texas and the Universite Libre in Brussels. Dr. Prigogine's mathematical models could also be applied to problems as disparate as the growth of cities and the dynamics of traffic jams, laying down the foundation for a field now known as complexity. In an interview in 1977 after the announcement of his Nobel Prize, Dr. Prigogine explained his research in terms of an analogy with two towns, one walled off from the outside world, the other a nexus of commerce. The first town, he said, represents the closed system of classical physics and chemistry, which must decay according to the second law of thermodynamics. The second town is able to grow and become more complex because of its interactions with the surrounding environment. Born in Moscow in 1917, Ilya Prigogine moved to Germany with his family in 1921 after the Russian Revolution and then to Belgium in 1929. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry at the Universite Libre in Brussels. He became a Belgian citizen in 1949. In research beginning after World War II, Dr. Prigogine devised mathematical models that showed how chemical reactions could produce complex, changing patterns. The patterns, which he called ''dissipative structures,'' were observed in physical chemical experiments in the late 1960's. In 1967, Dr. Prigogine became a professor of physics and chemical engineering at the University of Texas, where he started the Center for Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics. The center is now named the Ilya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems. Dr. Prigogine wrote or was co-author of 20 books and almost 1,000 research articles. At his death, Dr. Prigogine was director of the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry in Brussels. Dr. Prigogine is survived by his wife, Marina Prokopowicz, and two sons, Yves and Pascal.
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