Philip Emeagwali

Philip Emeagwali was born in Akure, and raised in Onitsha in the South Eastern part of Nigeria. Unfortunately his schooling was suspended in 1967 as a result of the Nigerian Civil War. At 13 years he served in the Biafran army, but after war he completed high-school through self-study.

Fast forward to 1977 after completion of a correspondence course at the University of London, Emeagwali traveled to America for a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oregon State University. And later received a master’s degree from George Washington University in ocean and marine engineering, and a second master’s in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland.

Unfortunately, between 1987 and 1991 Emeagwali studied for a Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan but his thesis was not accepted by the committee thus was not awarded the degree. He filled a court challenge stating the decision was a violation of his civil rights and was a subject of racial discrimination but it was dismissed by the court.

In 1989 Emeagwali won the Gorden Bell Prize for price-performance in high-performance computing applications, in an oil reservoir modeling calculation using a novel mathematical formulation and implementation. It was an applicaton of the CM-2 massively-parallel computer. Emeagwali’s simulation was the first program to apply a psuedo-time approach to reservoir modelling.