Famous Contemporary Romanians

Interview with Mr. Adrian Bejan, Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University and ranked among the most-cited authors of all engineering by the Institute of Scientific Information.

Born in Galati, in 1948, Professor Bejan emigrated from Romania in 1968. Mr. Bejan was one of the early Mathematical Olympiad winners, during his high-school years. During the Prague Spring the political liberalization movement in Czechoslovakia, under Alexander Dubcek, Romania took some steps towards liberalization and permitted a contest for scholarships abroad. Mr. Bejan earned one of the half-dozen places in the contest and was admitted by MIT where he completed his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering finishing in 1975.

 (From left to right: Adrian Bejan, his mother - Marioara Bejan, his father - Anghel Bejan and his brother, Anton Bejan)

In terms of cultural differences, Prof Bejan comments: “There was no such thing like East and West.” Brought up in a family of intellectuals – his father was a veterinarian and his mother a pharmacist – educated before communism, his parents were teaching him that there were no differences. Thus Mr. Bejan had the feeling about the environment in America that it was actually “just a town in which I grew up. The only aspects were those related to some “reverses of image”, like the fact that “the police was your friend and not your enemy.”

With regards to assimilating the local culture and transition process, it took Prof Bejan two months to feel comfortable with the English language, because with engineering and science there already existed familiar concepts. “What I mean by civilization” says Mr. Bejan, “ is the idea not the language. The language is learned and facilitates, the message is what brings us together, the fact that we agree with it, the fact that we know it and rely in it. It is important to keep that in mind.”

In developing his theory on thermodynamic principle, Mr. Bejan claims that his approach was facilitated by the good education he received at the level of middle and high school in Romania. Exposure to disciplines like zoology, anatomy, biology, geography as well as the history of civilization, the movement of people and migration and the story of evolution served as a base for one of Professor Bejan principles related to the tree-shape form of architecture, part of his unique constructal theory.

“A political system – like an engineering system or a natural system – has to be self-correcting to endure. Freedom, in the realms of politics and economics nurtures networks that are efficient, including networks for encouraging creativity and for maximizing profits. That’s why democracy has staying power,” concludes Professor Bejan.

A few biographical notes:

Adrian Bejan received all his degrees from M.I.T.: B.S. (1971, Honors Course), M.S. (1972) and Ph.D. (1975). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science (1976-1978).  He served on the faculty of the University of Colorado in mechanical engineering from 1978 to 1984. He was appointed as a full professor of mechanical engineering with tenure at Duke University in 1984, and J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor in 1989.

Adrian Bejan pioneered numerous original methods in thermal sciences, such as entropy generation minimization, scale analysis of convection, heatlines and masslines, designed porous media, and the constructal law of design in nature.

Adrian Bejan is ranked among the most-cited authors in all of engineering (all fields, all countries, living or deceased) by the Institute of Scientific Information (www.isihighlycited.com). He is the author of 23 books and 470 peer-refereed journal articles.

He was awarded 15 honorary doctorates by universities all over the world, for example, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, Zurich, 2003). He received numerous society awards, including the Max Jakob Memorial Award (ASME & AIChE, 1999), Ralph Coats Roe Award (ASEE, 2000), Luikov Medal (ICHMT, 2006), Donald Q. Kern Award (AIChE, 2008), Worcester Reed Warner Medal (ASME, 1996), and the James Harry Potter Gold Medal (ASME, 1990).

Other sources:

- Duke Magazine, September – October 2007

- Constructal Theory, web portal

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The Romanian version of the article was also published in the Evenimentul Zilei publication. Follow the link for details: http://www.evz.ro/dmain/article/831788/Galateanul-Adrian-Bejan-intre-Einstein-si-Darwin/?id_domain=2

Happy to announce that Distinguished Professor Mr. Adrian Bejan will be awarded the Honoris Causa degree in Mechanical Engineering, by the University of Roma La Sapienza. The ceremony will take place on May 13th, 2009, in Rome.

warm appreciations!