ECOS 2026: Prof. Bejan, you developed outstanding research activities in different areas of Engineering Thermodynamics with an emphasis to Entropy Generation Minimization. Which are the aspects that must be further investigated in this field?
Prof. Adrian Bejan: I do not think of gaps or areas that need to be investigated. Ideas are mental images. They happen; they occur in everyone’s mind. Often, I see ideas when I wake up. Right after, I think about the new image and, if attractive (beautiful, useful), I work on it to an end.
ECOS 2026: The study of the coupling between process and structure has been brought to a new level by your research and of your co-workers. Which are the most relevant achievements that you would like to underline?
Prof. Adrian Bejan: You are referring to one idea published in 1996, the constructal law of evolution everywhere. My life in science was guided by ideas on a road to unexpected discoveries, a road paved with freedom:
As a student at MIT, I felt attracted to the simple, beautiful and general science, called thermodynamics. In addition, from engineering I heard the call to greater performance, which meant reduced irreversibility (or entropy generation).
All along, I sensed the elephant in the room: one cannot argue about performance without having a mental viewing of a configuration with movement, called ‘design’. The beautiful science of thermodynamics was about empty boxes (called ‘systems’), without configuration.
Obvious was the clash between the doctrine and the reality, called ‘nature’. The constructal law was my simplest (most general) statement that empowers physics with a new phenomenon and law—evolution—change after change in a discernible direction called ‘time’.
About my ‘most relevant achievements’ I will let others do the talking. Here is an excerpt from the citation for my ASME Medal (2024), “…the highest award that the society can bestow: Prof. Bejan is credited with several groundbreaking developments. 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 impactful scientists…”
ECOS 2026: We use to say that thermodynamics is the science that is synthesizing the results of empiric observations on energy conversion and motion, in a coherent logical framework of laws and served as a backbone for the model-based approaches in science. How you consider that these achievements shall support the new data driven approaches in science?
Prof. Adrian Bejan: No. Thermodynamics is the science of power, from sources of useful energy (exergy). Power is the cause of all the movement, life, climate, wealth, freedom, peace, and permanence. Thermodynamics is ‘science’, which is why engineering is science, not tinkering. With the power to predict evolution of design and movement in nature, thermodynamics becomes all powerful, not only simple and beautiful.
ECOS 2026: In one of your public positions, you argued about the decline of disruptive science. Would you be so kind as to elaborate your position on this topic?
Prof. Adrian Bejan: Disruptive science is vanishing because of government-driven collectivization of thinking, research, and publishing. The new idea comes from the individual, not from the herd. Ask any veterinarian.
Single-author ideas and predictive theories that rock the boat do not appear in the top journals anymore. They are not being awarded grants by government agencies. Big groups, centers, groupthink, big budgets, and marginal work is the norm. Priorities, initiatives, and dictates rain down from faceless and nameless administrators in government and universities. The few remaining ‘Lone Rangers’ are not related (or indebted) to the usual ‘collaborators’ rewarded by top journals and government funding agencies.
ECOS 2026: As the Honorary Chair of ECOS 2026 Int. Conference, which are your expectations from this event?
Prof. Adrian Bejan: What do I expect from ECOS 2026? Nothing, except attention, questioning, and open discussion. Here something to be expected about science because it is design in nature:
Once dear (rare), now derisory. This general prediction comes from the constructal law, the theory of S-curve spreading and collecting.
Science is doomed, unless individuals rise, speak, publish and teach the truth about freedom, the merit system, and the evil of collectivization and administration (government, university) packed with mediocrity, envy, plagiarism, ‘origin’ academics, cancel culture, and censorship.