Chaos and beauty in a beaker: The early history of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction

Abstract

Discovered in 1950 by Belousov in the Soviet Union and further investigated by Zhabotinsky and his research group in the 1960s, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction soon came to the wider attention of scientists on both sides of the Iron Curtain and made an important contribution to consolidating Prigogine's theory of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Allowing scientists to study chaotic behavior in the laboratory, it also paved the way for further investigations of self-organizing systems in biology and played an important part in the formation of the field of nonlinear science. Focusing on the period between 1950 and 1975, this paper explores the early history of this enigmatic reaction.