Superbrain of Africa
He's developed the world's fastest computer --- and
that's just the beginning
He left school in Standard 8 and lived with his family in a refugee camp. But
Nigerian Philip Emeagwali is now regarded as one of the world's best scientific
brains --- a man who has won truckloads of awards and is worth a cool R200
million ... Tim O'Hagan reports from Cape Town, South Africa [Published
in DRUM (Africa's leading magazine) on March 19, 1998].
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THE
8-year-old boy sat in his family's lounge and stared at the small alarm clock
his dad had put in front of him. He was furious because his friends were
playing soccer outside, and he had to sit here for the next three hours. ``Are you ready?'' asked his father. ``You
have 60 minutes to answer the next 100 questions.'' Young Philip Emeagwali nodded. He knew he
had just 36 seconds to answer each question. It was not enough time to write
the answers down, so he'd have to calculate them in his head. Philip's father started firing questions at
him. "Mohammed averaged 88 per cent in three mathematics tests. In the
first test he got 92 per cent. In the second he got 94 per cent. What per
cent did he get in the third test?" The little boy thought hard and
answered fast. For three long hours the questions came,
and at the end of each hour Philip had answered another 100 questions - and
he got most of them right. James Emeagwali smiled proudly. He knew his
son was no ordinary boy, and that in spite of his poverty, he would grow up
to become someone important.
Philip Emeagwali with some of the computers
he works with.
From a poor youngster in rural Nigeria he
grew up to become what the American magazine Michigan Today described
as "one of the world's fastest humans". He won this recognition and America's most
influential prize for computing genius --- the Gordon Bell Prize --- for
writing the formula that would enable a computer to make 3,1 billion
calculations a second. The formula enabled the American oil industry to tap
into huge reserves of underground oil, and contributed billions of dollars to
the government's oil-exploration programmes. In addition he has amassed university
degrees in five different fields and his wealth has enabled him to bring 18
relatives to America from Nigeria. Philip grew up in the commercial city of
Onitsha in south-eastern Nigeria where his father was a nurse. At school he was
so bright he was able to answer questions before his schoolfriends had even
written the questions down. Teachers and classmates, amazed at his
extraordinary ability, called him `Calculus,' because he was so good at
calculating -- or working out -- sums. But others were jealous and accused
him of using magical powers in his mathematics examinations. "Some of them didn't even know my real
name," he laughs. "To this day, if I hear someone call me
'Calculus,' I know without looking it's an old friend from home.'' By the time Philip got to Standard 4
teachers and classmates considered him a maths wizard who could solve
advanced problems in geometry, trigonometry and algebra. "My classmates would introduce me to
their friends as a maths genius and my teachers spoke of me as the young
Chike Obi --- a mathematical genius who made a name for himself in Nigeria.''
One day, Philip's maths teacher stood at
the front of the class, staring at the blackboard, unsure how to solve a
difficult problem. Philip walked forward, grabbed the piece of chalk from the
teacher's hand and wrote the answer on the blackboard.
The mathematical formula Philip wrote which
won him America's top award for computing genius.
When he was in Standard 4 his headmaster
let him teach mathematics classes whenever his teacher couldn't be there. But there were times when Philip's genius
worked against him. In 1965 at the age of 10 he was accused of cheating in a
mathematics entrance examination to Saint Georges Grammar School in the
Nigerian town of Obiaruku and denied admission. The reason? -- he finished the one-hour
examination in five minutes and scored 100 per cent, while the next highest
score was 57 per cent. The school did not believe that a 10-year old was
capable of such a feat. In spite of his genius for mathematics, Philip had to
leave school in Standard 8, because his father could no longer afford the
school fees. But back home, his father continued
teaching him. Eventually James Emeagwali had to stop teaching his son,
because Philip knew more than he did. As a result, the pre-teenager studied
on his own to finish high school and to earn a General Certificate of
Education from the University of London. What makes Philip's achievements even more
extraordinary is that his family had to flee Nigeria during a civil war. "We slept in refugee camps, abandoned
school buildings and bombed houses. We stood in long lines to receive food
from charity organisations," says Philip. "But the hardship of living in a
refugee camp made me psychologically strong. It made me street smart. It
equipped me a greater sense of determination and vision." At the age of 17 he won a scholarship to
Oregon State University in America, where he studied maths. After that he
went to George Washington University, where he was awarded two masters'
degrees: one in civil and environmental engineering and another in ocean,
coastal and marine engineering. He was also awarded a master's degree in
mathematics from the University of Maryland. He has worked as a civil engineer in
constructing traffic highways in Maryland and operating hydroelectric dams in
Wyoming and today is a consultant in supercomputing, internet and information
technology.
Philip got his idea for programming the Connection
Machine by watching bees build their honeycombs. No other creatures on earth
work more efficiently that a community of bees building a honeycomb, he
thought. So why not program a computer that uses thousands of other computers
(like bees) to work? So instead of using a single huge computer the size of a
luxury car to do all his work, Philip used the Internet to connect to 65000
smaller computers. This way he found his computer could do an
amazing rate of 3,1 billion calculations a second -- three times the speed of
the previous Gordon Bell prize winner --- and set a new world record. The computer works on the principle that
it's more powerful to have 65,000 chickens pull an ox wagon than eight oxen. Having established the fastest computer on
Earth, Philip started putting it to work. He wanted to solve one of the
nation's 20 most difficult problems: understanding how oil flows underground
so companies could extract the most oil in the cheapest and easiest way. Typically, oil is trapped within rocks ---
like water in a drenched sponge --- and oil companies can remove only five
per cent to 50 per cent. Philip and his computer found a way to get
much more oil out of the ground -- a discovery regarded by oil companies and
the United States Government as a world breakthrough which would enrich the
nation by billions of dollars. Now his supercomputer is being used not
just to find oil but for several other major international projects, such as
improving the accuracy of weather predictions, explaining the unsolved
mysteries of science, tracking the flow of blood in the human heart,
calculating the movement of buried nuclear waste, tracking the spread of
AIDS, and determining the long-term effects of gases in the air and how the
heat of the sun is burning up the Earth. Philip has received dozens of awards for
his pioneering work, a tribute to his extraordinary contribution to science. This year he was awarded Africa's largest
scholarly prize, the Nigeria Prize, by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Last year the National Society of Black
Engineers in the United States awarded him the title Pioneer of the Year. In
1991 the same society voted him Scientist of the Year. He has also been voted Africa's Best
Scientist, America's Best & Brightest Inventor in 1996, and the Computer
Scientist of the Year by America's National Technical Association in 1993. Other awards include Nigerian Achiever of
the Year (1994); Distinguished Scientist Award, by the National Society of
Black Engineers in America (1991); Distinguished Eagle Achievement (1996);
Distinguished Visitor Award, presented by the the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (1993-1996). In 1995 the National Technical Association
placed him among America's top six scientists. But the crowning glory of
Philip's career was the Gordon Bell Prize presented to him by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1989. Regarded as the computer world's Nobel
Prize, it set him among the ranks of the world's best brains, and gave him
the recognition his father always knew he deserved.
"My son is going to encounter racism
in the US which will deny him the opportunity to contribute as much as he can
to society," he says. "I want him to be inspired by the fact
that I was a high school drop-out and ex-refugee who overcame racism and made
scientific contributions that benefited mankind. "I like to invent things that help
many people," he says. "Research is hard work, therefore, I only
work on important scientific problems." Philip is a workhorse - working 13-hour
days seven days a week. But his wife Dale, a professor at Morgan State
University in Baltimore, Maryland, doesn't mind his long hours -- she also
has a demanding working week and was voted the 1996 Scientist of the Year by
America's National Technical Association.
Philip with his wife, Dr. Dale Emeagwali.
He even forgot to deposit the R5 000 he won
for the Gordon Bell Prize. "I get so involved in what I'm doing that I'm
too busy to do things like that," he says. But this absent-minded professor is never
too busy for his family. During the past fourteen years he has brought 18
relatives including his parents from Nigeria. They now live in Washington DC area, where
five brothers and sisters graduated from the University of Maryland and two
are in school. His sister Edith, who serves in the United
States navy as a registered nurse said: "Philip's the most intelligent person
in the family, and we're all trying to follow in his footsteps." For Philip, a positive attitude and lots of
hard work has proved a winning recipe. "Life is a journey and we should
spend the early years preparing for it. To become a scientist required many
years of education. I never accepted defeat. I kept trying," he says.
"We must ensure that our children are
properly educated. When we invest in our children, we will find that our
standard of living grows, too. We should invest in education and technology
not because it is easy, but because our children will be the beneficiaries
tomorrow of the decisions, we adults, make today. "Investing in education and technology
will be our legacy to our children; because it will bring the best out of
them as well as all Africans and enable us to reach our potential as
individuals, as communities, as a people." Philip told DRUM it required a lot of hard
work, perseverance and dedication for an African to become successful in
Europe or North America. "Successful Africans help break the
negative prejudices against Africans and inspire the younger generations of
Africans to accomplish more. "Studying abroad makes it easier to
become successful abroad. When I got to America I was amazed at the level of
technological development there. In one day I saw an airport, used a
telephone, used a library, talked with a scientist, and was shown a computer
for the first time in my life. Not in my wildest dreams did I expect to be
recognised as a contributor to American technology."
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![[Philip Emeagwali]](./Superbrain%20of%20Africa_files/image001.jpg)
![[Philip Emeagwali's Reservoir Equations]](./Superbrain%20of%20Africa_files/image002.jpg)
![[Dale and Philip Emeagwali]](./Superbrain%20of%20Africa_files/image003.gif)
