Adrian Bejan received his B.S. (1971, Honors Course), M.S. (1972, Honors Course), and Ph.D. (1975) degrees in mechanical engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1976 until 1978 he was a Fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Adrian Bejan joined the faculty of the University of Colorado as an assistant professor in 1978 and was promoted to associate professor in 1981. Three years later he was appointed full professor with tenure at Duke University. He was awarded the J. A. Jones distinguished professorship in 1989.
Adrian Bejan has pioneered several original methods in thermal sciences and engineering: for example, entropy-generation minimization, scale analysis of convective heat and mass transfer, heatlines and masslines, designed porous media, the intersection of asymptotes method, and the optimal spacings of compact multiscale structures for maximum transport density. He formulated the constructal theory of design in nature in 1996.
Adrian Bejan is ranked among the 100 most-cited authors in all of engineering (all fields, all countries) by the Institute for Scientific Information (www.isihighlycited.com). He is the author of 20 books and 450 journal articles.
He has received 15 honorary doctorates from universities in 10 countries: for example, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in 2003.
Professor Bejan has been honored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) with the Edward F. Obert Award (2004), Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award (2001), Worcester Reed Warner Medal (1996), Heat Transfer Memorial Award-Science (1994), James Harry Potter Gold Medal (1990), and the Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award (1988). In 1999, he received the Max Jakob Memorial Award from the ASME and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He was honored with the Ralph Coats Roe Award (2000) by the American Society for Engineering Education.