http://www.newsrescue.com/2010/10/emeagwali-a-beacon-of-hope-for-africa/



October 28th, 2010

In times when the African continent as a whole hardly has its praises sang. In times when negatives about Africa are more commonly depicted than positives, a few men have stood out more than any other to restore dignity to a disenfranchised continent and turn hopes and dreams into feasible, mathematical realities. We are talking of the likes of Nelson Mandela, denied, imprisoned, chastised, but later recognized, instated and celebrated. No doubt, Nelson Mandela, labeled a terrorist at a time, who spent over two decades of his life years in jail and then was released and elected president of South Africa, will forever be celebrated as one of the greatest men that ever lived.


But today we talk about another great beacon of Africa’s problems, potentials and promise. Mr Emeagwali, Professor Emeagwali, aka “a father of the internet”, aka “digital giant”.

Some may not know this great African who hails from Nigeria, others know him by many great accolades, and some others know him by great controversy.

CNN calls him “a father of the internet“, Time called him the “unsung hero” behind the internet, the US president, Bill Clinton called him “the Bill Gates of Africa,” and BBC in March this year, 2010, interviewed him among others as a “digital giant“.


So who is this simple, yet complicated fellow. Phillip Emeagwali was born in the Eastern part of Nigeria, Africa’s largest Nation of over 100 million citizens.  He was brought up during trying times of civil war in Nigeria and according to him was strengthened by the trials associated: “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.”

A dropout and outcast

A serial school dropout, Emeagwali learned non conformance and independence from formal establishments. His personal interests speared him and in his early life, he studied books of  Galileo, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein. A desire to be an astronaut and mathematician brought him to the United States and into college to pursue his dreams.

Father of the internet

In the 1970s, Emeagwali theorized that 65,000 computers around the Earth could forecast the weather. That theoretical supercomputer, with 65,000 nodes, is today’s Internet. For the audacity of his theorized Internet, the book “History of the Internet” and CNN called him one of the fathers of the Internet.

For this early hypothesis, books on the origins of the internet have described Emeagwali as one of the fathers of the internet as have various media publications and academic institutes. In his speech at the University of Michigan, he described himself as not the father of the internet, but of course, one of many successive and contributory minds that in the collective inspired what we know as the internet today. In his words- “the internet inspiration has not only fathers, but aunts, brothers, sisters, etc, and the answer to the rather simple question, who is its father, is extremely complex”. Other main contestants for a great role in fathering the internet are the New York teachers association and the United States defense services.

Emeagwali the Supercomputer man

In 1989 Philip Emeagwali programmed the Connection Machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion calculations per second using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs. For this feat, he was awarded the Gordon bell software prize by the IEEE, the worlds largest professional association for the advancement of technology, a body of over 85,000 scientists. Most other winners of these awards were teams, like the Mobil team that won an award the same year. Emeagwali won as an individual an accolade deserving of an entire team of 100s.
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At the time of his winning this great feat, Emeagwali was not having the best academic time once again in his life. Indeed the story of professor Emeagwali is very common among geniuses. Albert Einstein, was known to have had a very unsuccessful school life and often cut classes and used the time to study physics on his own or to play his violin. He passed his examinations and graduated in 1900 by studying the notes of a classmate. His professors did not think highly of him and refused to recommend him for a university position. He first got his diploma from a polytechnic, Stephen Hawkings too was also known to have been awarded a second class at graduation from college. In college, Hawking was passing, but his unimpressive study habits resulted in him having a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honors, making an “oral examination” necessary.

Emeagwali was having his doctoral dissertations rejected by predominantly White boards at this time, in a MLK and Rosa Parks America, and he ended up not receiving this degree even upon taking the establishment to court several times. But his genius and role forever in the history of science had been established. Emeagwali from his personal endeavors and the strength he had learned as a child where he was forced to have truncated schooling and had to learn and make his way on his own, had done so again in his adult life and still continues to do so, against all odds,  not just for himself but for the entire Black race who all face similar disappointments in a world not perfect. In his words, “living in America, I was an outcast in the scientific world”, that I yet conquered. Much can be read of his achievements on his site- www.Emeagwali.com

[B]
With his success, academic journals that formerly rejected his work turn to praise:[/B]

“The amount of money at stake is staggering. For example, you can typically expect to recover 10 percent of a field's oil. If you can improve your production schedule to get just 1 percent more oil, you will increase your yield by $400 million,” wrote the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize Committee in the academic journal Software (May 1990).

In the bimonthly news journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, mathematician Alan Karp wrote: "I have checked with several reservoir engineers who feel that his calculation is of real importance and very fast. His explicit method not only generates lots of megaflops, but solves problems faster than implicit methods. Emeagwali is the first to have applied a pseudo-time approach in reservoir modeling.” (SIAM News, May 1990)

His words on configuring the supercomputer:

Briefly, to program it requires an absolute understanding of how all 65,536 processors are interconnected. The processing nodes are configured as a cube in a 12-dimensional universe, although we only use it to solve problems arising from our three-dimensional universe.  To perform the world’s fastest computation, I divided and evenly distributed the calculations among the 65,536 processors and then squeezed the most  performance from the each processor. It took me 1057 pages to describe the hundreds of mathematical equations, algorithms and programming techniques that I invented and used. The gory details will be of interest to only mathematicians and super computer nerds. However, for your amusement, they include equations such as:


Emeagwalis’ greatest new challenges

Emeagwali- The greatest grand challenge for any scientist is discovering how to prevent the spread of HIV and finding the cure or an effective vaccine for AIDS. What he calls, the greatest “war” of our times.

Indeed Emeagwali is a Martin Luther King from Africa. He has used 100% of his well earned respect and power in the technological society and world at large to be a tireless positive and motivational speaker for the Black race. Today, no other black man compares to Emeagwali when it comes to speeches for the hope, resurrection and restoration of the African continent and Africans all over the diaspora to their esteemed heights. From Trinidad and Tobago to his home country, Nigeria. Emeagwali has given speeches upon speeches, stressing the challenges ahead and why and what Africa needs to do do prevent further problems and situate itself well to compete in an internet world, with the internet being the “eight continent” as he puts it.

In March this year, while being interviewed by the BBC, in their “digital giant” series, Emeagwali suggested and predicted that Nigeria and Africa will be the highest internet connected Nation in the world, superseding the United States and that we must prepare for this time. He also suggested the use of digital technology to solve one of Africa’s greatest issues,- corruption especially at the electoral level. Indeed knowing Emeagwali's predictions for their scary accuracy, there should be real hope for Nigeria as the technological future promises to return Nigeria to a front position among Nations.


A Black Pharaoh

Like the pharaohs, who the world for years denied of being black, but not until recently, about two years to be precise after many pro-African scientists had relentlessly published limitless evidence about the true color and ethnicity of the pharaohs, did the western system acknowledge the Black pharaohs, and as we see in this edition on of the National Geographic  magazine, full coverage on the Black Pharaohs. So also is Emeagwali denied in many circles, especial at home.

Indeed the proverb that “A prophet is denied in his own home”, has never been more presented than in the case of Emeagwali. Nigerians continue to question the truth of his accomplishments for one reason,- they do not see a western conferred degree on his name.

Nigerians and the love of titles

In Nigeria, if there is no title to your name, you are nobody. Greetings in Nigeria go thus- I am Dr, Chief, Professor, Alhaji, General so-and-so. If you do not complete an education in Nigeria you are never recognized. Not surprising, Bill Clinton respectfully compared Emeagwali to Bill Gates, another man known to have dropped out of college, yet made his mark, but Nigerians are not so embracing, hence form the first to date, Nigerians keep struggling to discredit Emeagwali because his dissertation was not accepted, possibly because as with the case of many geniuses, his superiors could not appreciate his higher intelligence and possibly out of racism. An outcast of the system, he says of himself.

Where are his publications? Why does he accept being called “a father of the internet”?, Why does he praise himself? These are some of the rather embarrassing questions Nigerians ask of Emeagwali. Most of these type of questions however do not deserve address because the merit of his achievements are clearly available in authentic online and global media archives and by world governments and these speak louder than any type of distortion, either borne out of jealousy or self hate as the case may unfortunately be.

Controversy, SaharaReporters attacks Emeagwali’s wife and more

Recently for instance a Nigerian online editorial known for its dog-like attacks of Nigerian public figures, published an all out attack at the dignified Emeagwali. But upon reading the article it was simply another  case where the usual shameful method of dirty mud-slinging used by similar media houses for lack of better tools was obvious. Almost the entire article poorly challenged statements purportedly made by Emeagwali's wife and not himself. We believe this was very unfortunate, but this was not a surprise to  many readers who associate this magazine with similar disingenuous publications about people, like the late Nigerian president, Yaradua's little son having fun, or other officials families, sitting innocently. Family attack is used by Nigerian media who unlike the United States and other developed media where certain standards must be upheld, act lawlessly and disgracefully.


Bill Clinton says there are thousands of Philip Emeagwalis. Please stand up!

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Indeed the then president of the United States was not just reading a speech, he was reading a well thought out, and prepared lecture for Nigerians in particular and Africans in general. There are many Emeagwali's in Africa, but they are lost under the pressure of a hostile system. They are smashed as Nelson Mandela got smashed and they loose their will and desire to stay alive till their time again comes and they are to lead the nation they love. Unlike Emeagwali they drop out of school, just once and quit, and never become known by their families, talk-less the entire world for their true worth. Emeagwali dropped out of school in his childhood, not once, not twice, not thrice but more than four times yet he trained himself and he did so so much that now, he is a Professor emeritus, a trainer of not just himself but of computers and men alike, teaching others everyday to be strong, to be determined and most importantly, to be unconventional, seeing behind at what other don't see and not giving up where others fail.

Unlike many Africans' Emeagwali continues to see a hope for Africa. This hope requires a lot of effort, but all the same Emeagwali one of the worlds greatest mathematicians calculates a sure and certain great future for Africa with the result of the leveling of world scenes with technological advancements. To be great in a technological world, no degree is required, no travel is required no prior experience is required, just having the knack of it, and your fingers on the keyboard make you known from your little, solar panel powered shack in Enugu to the farthermost corner of China.

The 1000’s of Emeagwalis in Nigeria, please stand up and follow the torch that Emeagwali, the non-conformant supercomputer, digital giant has lit and with which he calls upon you to be the greatest!

Listen to and watch the speech of Professor Emeagwali on the October 1st 50th year anniversary of Nigeria in 2010

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[B]Sankofa Mythic bird mentioned by Emeagwali in Golden Jubilee speech[/B]

Fabled Sankofa Bird. The Sankofas' head is always turned backwards, thus "facing the past." The Sankofa represents the old African adage "Always remember the past for therein lies the future, if forgotten, " We are destined to repeat it.

Nice speech

and some loser yoruba from thesame nigeria wants to pull him down? back stabber

lol @ beacon of hope, don't you mean beacon of fraud?

Daddy of the internet

Superego don reach this side?

Yoruba owned media trying to bring this great man now.

Thank God the world knows about the greatness of this Igbo man.

[quote="Environer"]Why do we blame Emeagwali for exaggerating his achievements? Is what he did not typical Nigerian?
Do these names and their claims ring any bell?[/quote]

I am yet to be told what way Emeagwali notably exaggerated his accomplishments.

=====
@ Eze,

I am not sure SaharaReporters is all to blame, there are a bunch of other shameless Igbos who have also long peddled this baseless hate and envious discrediting of this icon.

Emeagwalis should rather not reply his critics ; who almost terminated his destiny through obnoxious fighting strategy and through the 20 pound policy, these same people who inspite of not suffering any human disaster or marginalisation, who have been trouping in and out of the corridors of power, have nothing to offer mankind and humanity excepting pulling down world achievers ,thank God america is not nigeria.

Emeagwali shoudl help bring up other Emeagwalis

He doesn't.

The fact that BBC featured him as a world digital Giant, this March 2010 amidst all the trash talk form his Nigerian envious detractors, shows he knows where he is going, whereas they deserve no reaction from him.

I bet that again in 2 years, his dumb detractors will ask why he claimed of himself to be the world Digital Giant. lol, lol, lol They will again add this to his 'list of false claim inventions'. lol, lol. I can hear them saying- "Why did Emeagwali promote himself as the World Digital Giant, and the BBC believed him, the BBC are working for him, blah, blah, "


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A little curious why this guy suddenly sounds like the latest Nigerian scam, Gordon Bell 1989; CNN BBC, even Ibori was on CNN, cut me some slack, By the way he never invented the super computer

[quote="vwvw"]
A little curious why this guy suddenly sounds like the latest Nigerian scam, Gordon Bell 1989; CNN BBC, even Ibori was on CNN, cut me some slack, By the way he never invented the super computer
[/quote]

1. He was not simply interviewed by CNN, Time and BBC. He was recognized and praised by these among other agencies.
2. His winning the Gordon Bell prize in 1989 is an indisputable fact, easy to verify.
3. He and no one else ever sed he invented the supercomputer, are we talking about the same person here?

The evidence speaks for itself. Not every great thing out of Nigeria is 419

http://www.time.com/time/2007/blackhistmth/bios/04.html
http://www.cnn.com/fyi/interactive/specials/bhm/story/black.innovators.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/digital_giants/8561413.stm

simply tell me what the guy has done since 1989 and what makes him THE FATHER OF INTERNET, does he even possess a doctorate

my guy read; he doesn't even had a PHD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Emeagwali

vwvw:

my guy read; he doesn't even had a PHD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Emeagwali

vwvw:

simply tell me what the guy has done since 1989 and what makes him THE FATHER OF INTERNET, does he even possess a doctorate

You are attacking a brilliant man like Emeagwali, whereas you cant even construct a complete sentence. . . . Please do not allow jealousy and stupidity to kill you.

loool, did not see that, thats a NAIRALAND typo, at least i have a bachelors degree noone can dispute, and it's got nothing to do with jealousy, the cap doesn't fit the guy. We must exorcize this fraudulent corruption spirit that hovers about us. Philip Emeagwali is a scammer and must be dehisced

[quote="vwvw"]my guy read; he doesn't even had a PHD[/quote]

What is the relevance of having a Phd, and who sed he had one? Aimoye Phd lalagbon. {So many Phd in Alagbon jail)

Did you read the article? He had his dissertations rejected by the White-boards.

His genius is what makes him standout against these odds.

He was accorded the Gordon bell prize, for achieving a feat millions with Phd's can not!

He was recognized as a father of the internet not by himself but by the US Government and all news media because of his theories about the internet in the 70s.

Do not be a slave to titles and designations.

Chief, lawyer, MD, Alhaji, Barrister.


Since performing that great feat he has done the most dignifying thing a person can do- he has become a teacher of millions, holding speeches and teaching others to become great! He has been a crusader for Africa.

Martin Luther King did not have a Phd, but the world celebrates him today. Be wise.

well chew on this dude, besides the case was thrown out,
http://www.saharareporters.com/report/how-philip-emeagwali-lied-his-way-fame

[quote="vwvw"]well chew on this dude, besides the case was thrown out,
http://www.saharareporters.com/report/how-philip-emeagwali-lied-his-way-fame[/quote]

That silly article merited the sensible article of this thread. Can you defend that dumb, hater Saharareporters article that as sed above, only picked on his wife?

Please point out one fact from it that merits their publishing it,

what abut this?
http://www.republicreport.com/intellectual-fraud-crisis-allegedly-rocks-%E2%80%9Cphilip-emeagwali-myths%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94reports/
Wake up dude, the guy is a big time fraud, the can of worms stinks to the high heavens, if he couldn't pass his PHD exams why does he call himself a doctor.
please tell me what patents beside EMEAGWALI.COM the daddy of internet can claim to possess

wvwv

Can you pick any point from any of those articles of useless Nigerian haters that merits discussion?

Submitted patents can not be verified unless they are approved.
Anyone can submit numerous patents, that's the easiest thing to do on earth.

I have submitted over 3 patents myself, do you want my full name to dig them out? I assure you, you won't find a thing.

Seriously that patent issue is the lamest attempt at discrediting a honorable as I have ever seen, only from Nigeria. Shame!

Well the truth is the guy may be an OK guy, but he's overhyped, cannot and does not merit a mention in a compilation of 1000000 of the greatest Nigerians alive, he simply hasn't done anything worth remembering, it's that simple. he reminds me so much of another laughable media sensation 'prof Iwedumo'-someone mentioned him earlier-he's got a patent an oil company denies him of accessing and he's got thousands of Nigerians hoping for the great pay day. Both men should team up maybe with professor abalaka

@vwvw

Tell me another Nigerian that has done as much as him.

1. He won a Gordon Bell prize in 1989, during the epic of racism against Blacks in aMerica for a great computer feat that teams could not win. The prize was given by the IEEE, the worlds largest organization of computer scientists.

2. USA president announced him as a Father of the Internet.

3. All major news media(BBC< CNN< TIME) recognized his genius in Internet and supercomputing.

4. As a philanthropist, he has dedicated his life to researching and presenting mathematical computed hopes and dreams for Africans.

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Tell me who else can compare,  And I am not talking about comparing as a great media announced 419, or Government thief oh!

yawn

suckers are still spamming the board with this scientist turned motivational speaker hustler

Philip Emegwali is reckon to be
d greatest black scientist ever & one of d greatest african of all time. He is a guy  i revere so much. Some of u guys may not understand  d mind blowing stride he made in d field of computing. I most tell you that prior to 1989 telling any computing scientist that what philip achieved would be achievable in 5Oyrs time he would say you are day dreaming. I must say that it is even tougher than d descovery of electromagnetic induction by Faraday. Atleast in this case scientists believed that it was possible since the concept of magnetic effect of current was already known. I believe that if he were to be white he would have been idolized like prof. Howlkings that is why Time mag. call him 'unsung hero'