All are welcome to attend; please contact Nina Hancock for more details.
Schedule of the day:
16:00 Lecture (Lecture Theatre 500, City & Guilds)
17.00 Drinks Reception (Level 2 concourse, City & Guilds)
Speaker: Adrian Bejan, J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor, Duke University
In the Chair: Professor Ricardo Martinez-Botas, FREng, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London
This lecture is an invitation to question the physics of diversity—why diversity happens naturally, and why it is a phenomenon that opposes any effort of being shoehorned into a few distinct (antagonistic) classes. Diversity is not the class struggle. Diversity is a natural phenomenon, everywhere, bio and non-bio, geo and socio. I begin with the fundamentals of design evolution in nature—movement, time direction, freedom to change, size, shape, structure. Next are several distinct evolutionary domains where diversity occurs the same way, naturally: people, animals, athletes, rhythms, technologies, and universities. An integral part of nature’s diverse design is the merit system. Diversity emerges naturally, inevitably, steadfastly, and beneficially. Unnatural (dictated) diversity is destined to fade, like all the bad designs and policies.
Adrian Bejan’s research is in thermodynamics, the science of power and configuration from flow with freedom, and the physics of evolution everywhere in nature, bio, and non-bio. He is credited with several groundbreaking developments. He unified thermodynamics with heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and the science of form (finite size, flow configuration, design), as a counterweight to the doctrine of reductionism. He discovered, taught, and applied the Constructal Law of evolution in nature, bringing together biologists, physicists, engineers, sociologists, philosophers, economists, managers, and athletes through his creative books on thermodynamics, convection, design in nature, and evolution. He was awarded 18 honorary doctorates and the ASME Medal for unprecedented creativity, breadth, and permanent impact on engineering.