A Nigerian father of the Internet
Philip Emeagwali was born in Akure, Nigeria on 23 August 1954. He is an Igbo Nigerian-born engineer and computer scientist/geologist who was one of two winners of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, a prize from the IEEE, for his use of a Connection Machine supercomputer to help analyze petroleum fields. He dropped out of school in 1967 because of the Nigerian-Biafran war. When he turned fourteen, he was conscripted into the Biafran army. After the war he completed a high-school equivalency through self-study and came to the United States to study under a scholarship after taking a correspondence course at the University of London. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oregon State University in 1977.
Emeagwali studied for a Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan from 1987 through 1991. His thesis was not accepted by a committee of internal and external examiners and thus he was not awarded the degree. Emeagwali filed a court challenge, stating that the decision was a violation of his civil rights and that the university had discriminated against him in several ways because of his race. The court challenge was dismissed, as was an appeal to the Michigan state Court of Appeals. He was also working as a civil engineer at the Bureau of Land Reclamation in Wyoming during this period. Philip Emeagwali was voted the 35th greatest African of all time in a survey for New African magazine, it was announced on August 26, 2004. Emeagwali also ranked as the greatest African scientist ever.
The technology category was topped by Imhotep, the multi-genius that designed Egypt's first pyramid. The science category was topped by Emeagwali famed for helping give birth to the supercomputer, the technology that gave rise to the Internet.
Emeagwali reformulated Newton’s Second Law of Motion as 18 equations and algorithms; then as 24 million algebraic equations; and finally he programmed and executed those equations on 65,000 processors at a speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second. Emeagwali's 65,000 processors, 24 million equations and 3.1 billion calculations were three world records that garnered international headlines.
Philip Emeagwali, a civil engineer and a computer scientist, is but one example. He uses his mathematical and computer expertise to develop methods for extracting more petroleum from oil fields. It was his formula that used 65,000 separate computer processors to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1989. That feat led to computer scientists comprehending the capabilities of supercomputers and the practical applications of creating a system that allowed multiple computers to communicate. He is recognized as one of the fathers of the Internet. Future applications for Emeagwali's breakthroughs with the use of data generated by massively parallel computers include weather forecasting and the study of global warming. Contributions of African-Americans reach beyond sports, entertainment and the arts -- the fields most often cited in discussions of African-American achievements. But scientific innovations and inventions -- ranging from a safe way to store and transfuse blood to modern uses of electricity -- developed by African-Americans have saved and changed lives. Current projects could yield increases in oil field projections and make flying safer. Recognition of accomplishments by African-American scientists provides role models for young people and refutes claims of the intellectual inferiority of the race .
