N.N. Bogoliubov's contribution to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (1937-1945)

It is shown that many important and still relevant results in the field of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics were derived by Bogoliubov (jointly with N. M. Krylov) early in the prewar years and were completely published in a still insufficiently known monograph of 1945. Among these findings were the concept of time hierarchy for stochastic evolution, the concept of quasi-averages that remove symmetry relative to time inversion, and the mechanism of dynamic relaxation of a physical object in a thermostat. © 2010 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.