DR. MAE-WAN HO

GENETICIST, BIOPHYSICIST

Mae-Wan was the author of several books and Editor of the Journal of Science in Society, produced by the Institute of the same name, which she founded. She was a prolific author. Two of her books are prominent in explaining the role of biological water in organising living processes. She has been extremely productive with nearly 200 scientific papers, over 600 popular articles and several more books. Mae-Wan wrote a book showing the lack of sustainability of genetically modified organisms. She also contributed significantly to the thermodynamics of complex systems, and discussed extensively the Prigogine ideas. Her recent work presented a reliable thermodynamics of living organisms, developing a Prigogine approach. In 2014 she was awarded the Prigogine Medal. The Medal was established by that University and the Wessex Institute in 2004 to honour the memory of Professor Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry. His ideas established the basis for ecological systems research. On that occasion, Dr Ho’s special lecture was on “Sustainable Cities: A New Perspective”. She demonstrated that the circular thermodynamics based on dynamic closeness in natural space-time dimensions enable organisms to approach zero entropy production simultaneously at equilibrium and far from equilibrium conditions. This confirms and extends Ilya Prigogine’s Principle of Minimum Energy Production for living systems and has implications for sustainable cities and other built environments, as well as ecosystems and economic systems. Dr. Ho worked with Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp for many years, and built upon his findings with her quantum coherence research as documented in her book The Rainbow and the Worm.