Miroslav Grmela
The Canadian physicist made substantial contributions to the fields of thermodynamics, rheology, and geometry.
Miroslav Grmela passed away on 16 June 2026 in Montreal at the age of 87.
Grmela was a physicist and a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, where he made substantial contributions to the fields of thermodynamics, rheology, and geometry. He amassed over 280 academic publications, including articles as recent as March 2026. In 2018, he published a book about his theories and received the S. G. Mason Award from the Canadian Society of Rheology .
Miroslav Grmela holds “Generic!” beer. He cofounded the mathematical framework GENERIC.
(Photo by Viera Grmela.)
Grmela’s greatest professional achievement was his discovery of how geometry simplifies nonequilibrium thermodynamics. He was a founding researcher in discovering the general equation for nonequilibrium reversible–irreversible coupling, a framework and formula for material evolution more commonly known as GENERIC. GENERIC is now a near-universal framework for understanding how physical systems evolve.
“Miroslav was one of the greatest figures in the field of nonequilibrium thermodynamics,” says Michal Pavelka, a physicist at Charles University who was Grmela’s former student and then his frequent coauthor.
“Miroslav brought the concepts of geometry and a ‘multiscale deductive paradigm’ to [nonequilibrium thermodynamics],” Pavelka says. “Before him, the mainstream approach was inductive—scientists took known equations for the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy and tried to stretch them to include microscopic details. Miroslav shifted the field toward a deductive approach.”
Grmela’s research was his passion and his raison d’etre, even in his old age. He was in the process of writing several articles when he abruptly died of a brain hemorrhage.
Grmela was born on 30 May 1939 and grew up in Prostějov in the former Czechoslovakia during World War II. He earned his PhD in Prague at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Afterward, he met his wife while completing mandatory military service. His two children were born in Czechoslovakia before the family immigrated to Canada in 1969 and eventually settled in Montreal.
Miroslav was a scientist, a mountaineer, a world traveler, a chef, and a family man. He saw beauty and philosophy in abstract mathematics in a similar way to his appreciation for music, literature, and art.
Grmela is survived by the love of his life—his wife, Viera Grmela—along with his two loving daughters and four grandsons.
Submissions are lightly edited for grammar and style. Click here for guidelines on submitting an obituary. If you are a copyright holder who thinks that an obituary violates your copyright, please contact us .
