Listen & Learn
Monday, October 13, 2014
After my Technological African Father, my other African hero (after my real Father), Philip Emeagwali
Philip Emeagwali's father went to school with Chike Obi, the first African to get a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Philip Emeagwali was born in 1954 in Nigeria. He was raised in the town of Onitsha which is located in South-Eastern Nigeria. Dubbed "Calculus" by schoolmates, Emeagwali at age 14 had mastered the subject, and could even out-calculate his instructors. Then a crisis struck. He had to drop out of school because his family could not afford to send all eight children. But he continued studying on his own, and after getting a general certificate of education from the University of London. At the age of 17, he was awarded a full scholarship to Oregon State University where he majored in math.
Bsc Mathematics
Upon graduation, he attended George Washington University and was awarded
2 Engineering Master's degrees
- civil engineering
-marine engineering
and
Master's in Mathematics from the University of Maryland.
He later achieved his
Doctorate (PhD) from the University of Michigan
-Civil Engineering (really scientific computing).
-Civil Engineering (really scientific computing).
Philip Emeagwali's greatest achievement, that warranted him the most praise, was The Connection Machine. The Connection Machine utilizes 65,000 computers linked in parallel to form the fastest computer on Earth. This computer can perform 3.1 billion calculations per second. This is faster than the theoretical top speed of the Cray Supercomputer. Though he did not "invent" The Connection Machine, his work on it won Philip Emeagwali the Gordon Bell Prize of 1989. The parallel computer was twice as fast as the previous year's computer. The Connection Machine was a great advancement over previous designs built by IBM's design teams of Thomas J. Watson, Jr. and Fred Brook.
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