A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University[1][2] and author of the books Design in Nature,[3] The Physics of Life [4], Freedom and Evolution [5] and Time And Beauty.
[2][8] He graduated in 1975 with a PhD from MIT a thesis titled "Improved thermal design of the cryogenic cooling system for a superconducting synchronous generator".
The book is aimed at practical applications of the second law of thermodynamics, and presented his ideas on irreversibility, availability and exergy analysis in a form for engineers.
The book combined thermodynamics theory with engineering heat transfer and fluid mechanics, and introduced entropy generation minimization as a method of optimization.
[8] In 1996 the ASME awarded him the Worcester Reed Warner Medal for "originality, challenges to orthodoxy, and impact on thermodynamics and heat transfer, which were made through his first three books".
In 1988 and 1989, his peers named two dimensionless groups Bejan number (Be), in two different fields: for the pressure difference group, in heat transfer by forced convection, and for the dimensionless ratio of fluid friction irreversibility divided by heat transfer irreversibility, in thermodynamics.
[2] From 1992 to 1996 he published four more books, Convection in Porous Media, Heat Transfer, Thermal Design and Optimization and Entropy Generation Minimization.
[23] On 18 July 2021, the International Association for Green Energy (IAGE) gave Bejan the IAGE Lifetime Achievement Award “For revolutionary contributions to thermal sciences through entropy generation minimization and the original development of a new law in physics, the constructal law, for predicting natural design and its evolution as climate, social ecosystems, and sustainability.”[24] In September 2023, peers from many countries reviewed Bejan's scholarly legacy on the occasion of his 75th birthday.
Bejan is honored for “unprecedented creativity, breadth, and permanent impact on engineering; for developments in the new science of energy, motion, form, and evolution; and for building bridges to design in biological, geophysical, and sociological systems.
He unified thermodynamics with heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and the science of form (i.e., flow configuration, image, design), as a counterweight to the doctrine of reductionism; discovered, taught, and applied the Constructal Law of evolution in nature; and brought together biologists, physicists, engineers, sociologists, philosophers, economists, managers, and athletes with creative books for the public, including Design in Nature (2012), The Physics of Life (2016), Freedom and Evolution (2020), and Time and Beauty (2022).
He holds a position among the top 0.01% of most-cited and impactful scientists, is the sixth most impactful scholar in mechanical engineering worldwide, and the 11th across all engineering disciplines, according to the citations impact database in PLOS Biology.” At a public ceremony on 9 October 2024 in Bucharest, the Romanian Basketball Federation conferred upon Prof. Bejan the Title of Excellence: "For promoting the role of sport in achieving excellence in academia, and his remarkable contributions to combining science and sport, embodying in his career as physicist and basketball player an exceptional synergy between the laws of physics and the dynamics of sport.
Through his innovative studies and the applicability of constructal theory in the field of movement, he opened new horizons for understanding and optimizing performance in sport in general, and in basketball in particular.