The Concept of Dissipative Structures – Formulated by Whom?

The concept of dissipative structures may be regarded as one of the important concepts in modern science. It is also present in philosophical literature as well as in scientific journalism. This concept is traditionally associated with the works of Ilya Prigogine and his colleagues, published in the 1970s–1980s. Recently, however, the name of Alan Turing, a major figure in the 20th century science and one of the founders of modern computer science who in 1952 published a paper on morphogenesis, began to be mentioned in connection with the notion of dissipative structures. We agree that this notion can be traced back to this paper by Turing. However, the concept of dissipative systems was formulated within the conceptual framework of Prigogine and his co-authors.