The lecture will present facets of the conjecture that the role of entropy is to maximize the rate of dissipation.  BIO: Constantine Dafermos was born in Athens, in 1941. He received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University, in 1964, and a Ph.D. in Mechanics from Johns Hopkins, in 1967. After teaching for three years at Cornell, he moved to Brown, in 1971, where he is currently a Professor of Applied Mathematics. His work lies at the interface between continuum mechanics and partial differential equations.