Prigogine, Ilya research

I had the privilege of being one of his oldest disciples and, subsequently, a researcher who remained close to Ilya Prigogine. In the present chapter, 1 wish first to relate the main events of his life (Section l.B). This presentation is based on my own actual experience and on my perception of Prigogine s personality. One will find another source (sometimes a little different in the interpretations ) in his autobiography, available on the internet ... 

The war period was not one of scientific inactivity. The publication record of Ilya Prigogine contains 13 papers on thermodynamics published between 1940 and 1944 in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Belgium, in the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Belgium, and in the Journal de Physique et le Radium (France). One learns from the acknowledgments of these papers that the young researcher was subsidized by the Solvay Institutes. 

All those who had the chance of knowing him remember in Ilya Prigogine a man of great generosity. He strongly supported and helped to form the careers of numerous researchers and teachers, not only in Brussels, but throughout the world One finds disciples and admirers in Western and Eastern Europe, in Russia, in the United States of America, in Latin America, in Japan, in China, in India, and so on. 

During the period 1945-1960, Prigogine worked on an intensive research program on Mixtures and Solutions. It can be framed into what can be called Classical physical chemistry. It is clearly inspired by the professor he succeeded at the ULB and to whom many references are made Jean Timmermans, a remarkable experimental physico-chemist. The results of these research efforts were published in a monograph written by Ilya Prigogine, Victor Mathot, and Andre Bellemans The Molecular Theory of Solutions (LS.7), published in 1957 today this is still considered to be an important reference. 

GEN.298. I. Prigogine, Foreword, in Essays Commemorating the Founding of the International Institute of Integration Research, Daiseion-Ji (to appear). [Last (handwritten) manuscript of Ilya Prigogine.]... 

This chapter is the final work contributed by Professor Ilya Prigogine and was originally prepared to report a summary of recent developments of his research with his colleagues in the Journal (PNAS) of the National Academy of Science, where Professor Prigogine was a member. We are pleased to realize its publication in this Proceedings of the symposium in his memory. 

I Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003). Ilya Prigogine was born in Moscow in 1917. His family moved to Germany to escape the Russian revolution and subsequently moved to Belgium. He studied at the Universite Libre in Brussels and remained there as a faculty member to conduct research on nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He was also associated with the University of Texas, which found a unique way to mark his receiving the Nobel Prize a tower on the Texas campus is illuminated when one of the university s sports teams wins a championship. It was also illuminated at the time of the announcement of his Nobel Prize. 

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