Used with
permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps
Ilya Prigogine (1917-), a Russian-born Belgian chemist, received the 1977 Nobel prize in chemistry for theoretical work on "dissipative structures" by applying thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to non-equilibrium, irreversible processes and systems. Prigogine showed that this new form of ordered structures can exist under conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium, but only in symbiosis with their environment. For these, entropy and disorder increase in the real world, but they remain themselves internally highly ordered as systems. This Swedish stamp is a fascinating allegory of this theory; the horses in their environment are such "dissipative structures."