Theophile Ernest de Donder [1872 – 1957] was a Belgian thermodynamicist, mathematician, and physicist famous for his 1923 work in developing correlations between the Newtonian concept of chemical affinity and the Gibbsian concept of free energy. He received his doctorate in physics and mathematics from the University of Brussels in 1899.[1] He is considered the father of thermodynamics of irreversible processes.[2] De Donder’s work was later developed further by Ilya Prigogine. De Donder was an associate and friend of Albert Einstein.
