Glansdorff, Paul Gustave (1904-1999)

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Engineer and physicist specialised in thermodynamics, born in Sint-Gillis (Brussels) on 17 October 1904 and died in Ukkel on 23 June 1999.

Biography

Paul Glansdorff was born in Sint-Gillis (Brussels on 17 October 1904. He received his secondary education at the Atheneum of Saint-Gillis and then at the Institut Michot Mongenast. He went on to study civil engineering at the ULB. In 1930 he became a qualified engineer. The same year, he was appointed scientific collaborator at the NFWO, where he was attached to the Faculté polytechnique of Mons. From 1931 to 1937, he was an NFWO-aspirant at the Faculté polytechnique in Mons. In 1937, he was recruited by the Union Chimique Belge and he became director of their research department. In 1941, he resigned and went to work as a professor at the Faculté polytechnique of Mons. Here he taught mathematical physics and thermodynamics. In 1946, he was appointed extraordinary professor at the ULB in the Faculty of Applied Sciences, where he taught thermodynamics. In 1954 he was promoted to full professor. From 1961 onwards he was ordinary Professor at the Faculty of Science. He also continued to teach at the Faculté polytechnique of Mons.
At Faculty of Science at the ULB, he founded the Pool de Physique. Its purpose was twofold: to encourage experimental physics and to depersonalise the burden of teaching. In 1975, he was granted emeritus status.
He became a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1961, an effective member in 1971 and Director of the Science Class in 1977. He became a foreign member of the Académie des Sciences of Padua in 1976.
In the international field, he was chairman of the refrigeration committee at the Institut International du Froid from 1951 to 1955. He was chairman of the ISO committee from 1960 and vice-chairman of the scientific board from 1964 to 1967. He was also chairman of the general conference here and honorary chairman from 1979.
In 1958, he was knighted in the French Legion of Honour. He was also made Grand Officer in the Order of Leopold.
Together with Georges Van Lerberghe, he won the international Jules Boulvin prize for applied mechanics in 1937. Paul Glansdorff also won the five-yearly prize of the Friends of Hainaut for the period 1975 to 1980.
In 1988, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bourdeaux.
He died in Ukkel (Uccle) on 23 June 1999.

Work

His first publications were on the topic of moist gases and refrigeration technology. He was interested in the role of cold in the food sector and in very low temperatures (cryobiology, cryotherapy). During his directorship at the Union Chimique Belge, he conducted research on sulphate ovens, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid and organic synthesis.
He also wrote several works devoted to mathematical problems relevant to the calculus of variations.
Thanks to Théophile De Donder, he also became interested in the problem of non-equilibrium in thermodynamics. This problem formed the basis of his collaboration with Ilya Prigogine. Together, they made a breakthrough into the science of non-linearity. In 1971, the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium was cornered by the acquisition of a stability criterion.
The search for an evolutionary criterion occupied Belgian thermodynamicists for almost two decades (approximately from 1950 to 1965). It started out optimistically after the discovery by Paul Glansdorff and Ilya Prigogine, in 1954, of a universal inequality for a part of the variation of the entropy production associated with the variation of the generalised forces. But it soon turned out that far from this equilibrium the property of integrability could not be fulfilled, due to the presence of antisymmetrical contributions. For Glansdorff and Prigogine, this meant not only abandoning a universal variational formulation but also - much more importantly - calling into question the uniqueness and stability of the non-equilibrium regimes.

It was only in the 1960s that its importance and underlying significance really became clear when Ilya Prigogine and Paul Glansdorff advanced the theory of dissipative structures. This theory first provided a sound thermodynamic basis for the general category of 'self-organising phenomena' to which the Turing patterns belong. Using simple models such as the Brusselator, the Belgian partner succeeded in carrying out systematic theoretical investigations into the mechanisms and properties of reaction-diffusion patterns.
In 1966, Ilya Prigogine and Paul Glansdorff went their separate ways. Both studied thermodynamics from a different angle.
André Jaumotte (1919-?), in collaboration with Paul Glansdorff, applied to jet-propulsors the laws of mechanics and thermodynamics of mobile open systems. They thus obtained the useful power, the available power, the losses and thus the efficiency, of a reaction propulsor in all translational movements.
Despite his retirement, he continued to publish until 1989.

History of science
His last publications dealt mainly with the history of thermodynamics.

Publications

• Lijst met publicaties in: Nicolis, Grégoire & Jaumotte, André L.,"Paul Glansdorff", In: Annuaire ARB, jaargang 2005, Brussel: ARB, p. 68-76.
  

Bibliography

• Nicolis, Grégoire & Jaumotte, André L.,"Paul Glansdorff", In: Annuaire ARB, jaargang 2005, Brussel: ARB, p. 59-68.
• Nicolis, Grégoire & Jaumotte, André L., "Paul Glansdorf", In: Nouvelle Biographie Nationale, vol. 8, Brussel: ARB, 2005, p. 170-173.