Ervin Bauer (19 October 1890, Lőcse, Hungary, Austria-Hungary – 11 January 1938, Leningrad, Soviet Union) was a Hungarian biologist.

From 1933 Bauer lived and worked in Leningrad at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM), where he was head of the department of general biology .

Ervin Bauer formulated the principle of the sustainable non-equilibrium state which he considered as the basic characteristics of living matter: “The living systems are never in equilibrium; at the expense of their free energy they constantly perform work to avoid the equilibrium required by the laws of physics and chemistry under existing external conditions”.

[12] Living systems in this framework cannot support their organization only due to the influx of external energy, i.e. the ordering internal factor is involved.

The process of evolution, according to Bauer, corresponds to the increase in external work, which aims to exploit additional resources to maintain the living state of evolving biosystems.