Adrian Bejan | Duke University (original) (raw)

Adrian Bejan was awarded the 2018 Benjamin Franklin Medal for "his pioneering interdisciplinary contributions in thermodynamics and constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems."

He received the 2019 Humboldt prize for “his pioneering contributions to modern Thermodynamics and Constructal Law–a law of physics that predicts natural design and its evolution in biology, geophysics, climate change, technology, social organization, evolutionary design and development, wealth and sustainability.”

He earned his degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: B.S. (1971, Honors Course), M.S. (1972, Honors Course) and Ph.D. (1975). He was Fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California Berkeley (1976-1978). Since 1989 he is the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor at Duke University.

Adrian Bejan’s research is in applied physics, thermodynamics, theoretical biology, design and evolution everywhere in nature, bio and non-bio.

He is the author of more than 30 books and 690 peer-refereed journal articles. Google Scholar: h = 103, total citations 82,000 (Sept 2021). According to the 2019 ‘citations impact’ world rankings, he is the 9th among all Engineering authors in the world, all disciplines: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384

His impact on science is due to highly original ideas of theory, modeling, analysis and design that today bear his name: entropy generation minimization, scale analysis, intersection of asymptotes, heatlines, constructal law, the science of form (design), and evolution ‘as physics’, everywhere, bio and non bio.

Adrian Bejan’s books are used worldwide (in multiple editions and translations), for example: Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics (Wiley 2016) and Convection Heat Transfer (Wiley 2013), Design in Nature (Doubleday 2012), The Physics of Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) and Freedom and Evolution (Springer Nature 2020).

He was awarded 18 honorary doctorates from universities in 11 countries, for example, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), University of Rome I “La Sapienza”, National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) Lyon, and University of Pretoria. He is a member of the Academy of Europe, and the national academies of Mexico, Turkey, Romania and Moldova.

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