Interview
By
Mary
Bellis
Nigerian born
Dr. Philip Emeagwali first entered the limelight in 1989 when he won the
prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for his work with massively parallel computers.
He programmed the Connection Machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion
calculations per second using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs.
With over 41 inventions submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
Philip Emeagwali is making big waves in the supercomputer industry, amazing
achievements only surpassed by an even more amazing life.
About Nigeria,
how do you envision your beginning affecting your end?
Philip Emeagwali
- Nigeria is a West African nation of over 100 million energetic people.
It is endowed with lots of natural resources but lacks human resources.
It was recently ranked by the World Bank as the 13th poorest nation in
the world. Due to financial reasons, I dropped out of school after eight
years of formal schooling. During 1967-70 period, my family was homeless.
Sometimes, we slept in refugee camps, abandoned school buildings and bombed
houses.
The hardship
of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong. It is called
learning from the school of hard knocks. It made me street smart. It equipped
me with a greater sense of determination and vision.
Adversities
such as being homeless and going to prison has made many people stronger.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger. The hardships
that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.
Family photo
taken with my cousin Charles (third from right) with me standing on the
right (December 1962 at Uromi, Nigeria). I dropped out of school four and
half years later.
You speak
about the influence nature's own creativity has had upon your science theories,
how did this begin?
Philip Emeagwali
- I have expertise in five different fields which helps me to easily
understand the analogy between my scientific problems and those occurring
in nature. First, I identify an analogous problem in nature and borrow
from it. It is smarter to borrow from nature than to reinvent the wheels.
Your education
during your teenage years was outside of the school system, can you talk
about that experience?
Philip Emeagwali
- It was the toughest experience of my life. I dropped out of high
school four times between the ages of 12 to 17. When I enrolled in college
at age 19, I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education.
As a result, I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular
homework assignments. I preferred to study those subjects that were of
interest to me.
I learned by
reading the classic but out-of-date works of Galileo,
Isaac
Newton, Bertrand Russell and Albert
Einstein. Since there were no formally trained scientists in my hometown,
the famous commercial city of Onitsha, I gained a word-of-mouth reputation
as an expert in mathematics, physics and astronomy and students came to
consult me in these subjects.
What brought
about you leaving Africa?
Philip Emeagwali
- I wanted to become a mathematician, physicist or astronomer. I could
not study these subjects at the cutting-edge level in Africa. During the
week that I arrived in the United States, 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.
Today, I have
access to a $55 million super computer while many African scientists do
not have access to a personal computer. The greater opportunity enabled
me to make important discoveries and inventions.
Continue
interview > Philip
Emeagwali on winning the Gordon Bell Award and making supercomputers
all photos&illustrations
© Philip Emeagwali
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