Philip Emeagwali

Philip Emeagwali (born in 1954) is an Igbo Nigerian-born computer scientist/geologist who was one of two winners of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, a prize from the IEEE, for his use of the Connection Machine supercomputer – a machine featuring over 65,000 parallel processors – to help analyze petroleum fields.

Biography

Emeagwali was born in Akure, Nigeria in 1954.Hamilton, Janice. "Nigeria in Pictures". Page 70] 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 at university under a scholarship. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oregon State University in 1977. He received a master's degree in environmental engineering from George Washington University in 1981, and another master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1986. He also received a post-master's degree in ocean, coastal and marine engineering from George Washington University in that year. He was also working as a civil engineer at the Bureau of Land Reclamation in Wyoming during this period.

Awards

Emeagwali received the $1,000 [ [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19970012353_1997018248.pdf Gordon Bell Prize Lectures] ] 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, based on an application of the CM-2 massively-parallel computer for oil-reservoir modeling. He won in the "price/performance" category, with a performance figure of 400 Mflops/$1M, corresponding to an absolute performance of 3.1 Gflops. (The winning entry in the "peak performance" category that year – coincidentally also for oil-related seismic data processing on a CM-2 – actually achieved 6 Gflops, or 500 Mflops/$1M, but the judges decided not to award both prizes to the same team.) [ [http://www.sc2000.org/bell/pastawrd.htm Gordon Bell Prize winners 1987-1999] ] This simulation was the first program to apply a pseudo-time approach to reservoir modeling. [http://emeagwali.com/society/society-for-industrial-and-applied-mathematics/SIAM-news-oil-industry-problem.html Both Gordon Bell Prize Winners Tackle Oil Industry Problems] , SIAM News 23(3), 1990; excerpted on Emeagwali's Web site.]

Apart from the prize itself, there is no evidence that Emeagwali's work was ever accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, nor that it had any other lasting impact on the field of high-performance computing. [As of May 2007, none of the [http://dblp.uni-trier.de/ Computer Science Bibliography] , the [http://citeseer.csail.mit.edu/ CiteSeer Research Index] , nor [http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholar] contain any record of either scientific publications by Emeagwali himself, or documented uses of his methods and results by other researchers in academia or industry.] Nevertheless, based on the Bell Prize, he has since received numerous further awards [ [http://emeagwali.com/awards/awards.html Awards list at emeagwali.com, with photos] ] , ranging from one from the World Bank-IMF Africa Club to being voted the "35th-greatest African of all time" in a survey by "New African" magazine. [ [http://www.africasia.com/newafrican/na.php?ID=385&back_month=36 "Your 100 Greatest Africans of all time", "New African", August 2004] ] His achievements were quoted in a speech by Bill Clinton as an example of what Nigerians could achieve when given the opportunity. [ [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8228484564915781123 Bill Clinton, "Remarks to a Joint Session of the Nigerian National Assembly in Abuja", August 2000] ( [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2889/is_35_36/ai_67645146/pg_5 transcript] )]

Court case

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, claiming 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. [ [http://www.michbar.org/opinions/appeals/1999/102999/5473.html Michigan Appeals Court decision, "Emeagwali v. University of Michigan", October 1999] ( [http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0DXK/22_16/58614840/p1/article.jhtml summary article] )]

References

External links

* [http://edition.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html "Innovators Who Break Barriers", CNNfyi.com, February 9, 2001]
* [http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html "Philip Emeagwali: A Calculating Move", "TIME" Black History Month feature, February 8, 2007]
* [http://www.emeagwali.com emeagwali.com] - Emeagwali's personal website.
* [http://supernaturalminds.com/PhilipEmeagwali.html SupernaturalMinds.com: Philip Emeagwali] - biographical sketch from Stephen Palmer's Tesla fansite in Reno, NV
* [http://magazine.biafranigeriaworld.com/cezeilo/2003nov09.html "Self-Promotion and Self-Authentication: the Abuse of Cyber Pseudo-Anonymity. Part II: 'Father of the Internet'", "BiafraNigeriaWorld", November 2003] - an article that highly critically examines Emeagwali's claims, describing them as "disingenuous"
* [http://www33.brinkster.com/iiiii/inventions/emeag.html Philip Emeagwali myths] - another critical analysis