Posted: November 15, 2010 - 23:16

http://www.saharareporters.com/article/emeagwali-responds-what-did-emeagwali-discover

Introduction: This is the first in our weekly Monday series that will provide answers to our most frequently asked questions. In this column, we will focus on Philip Emeagwali’s discoveries and inventions, and will answer specific questions, such as, Why was Emeagwali called one of the fathers of the Internet?

How did his seventeen years in eight degree programs at five universities help him solve one of the “20 Grand Challenges” in science and engineering? Why did he need a supercomputer that sends and receives emails as an internet to solve it? How did he get exclusive access to a supercomputer, which today costs 1.32 BILLION dollars, according to The Wall Street Journal (October 4, 2010)?

Most importantly, how did he become a famous scientist? The key to success, Emeagwali believes, is to make discoveries and inventions and then become famous for creating new knowledge to be taught to mankind, present and future. The reason President Bill Clinton extolled Philip Emeagwali for creating the knowledge now used to program the supercomputer is that Clinton understood that the inventor is the first teacher of his invention to humanity.

Our weekly series will put the most emphasis on his discoveries and inventions. We’ll begin with Emeagwali’s “41 patent claims,” filed 20 years ago.

Regards,

His Inventions

Philip Emeagwali scribbled the actual equations used by the oil company Exxon (now Exxon Mobil) to simulate the flow of oil, water, and gas inside its petroleum reservoirs. Emeagwali pointed out that four forces exist inside every petroleum reservoir; he discovered that the Exxon Mobil equation had summed only three forces. Emeagwali correctly summed all four forces, namely: pressure, viscosity, gravity, and inertia. After learning about his discovery, Mobil Research and Development invited him (in a letter dated March 19, 1990) help the company in “reservoir simulation.” It’s as abstract as the Navier-Stokes equations listed in the “Seven Millennium Problems” but yet computably solved by Emeagwali. His equivalent of six degrees in mathematics and engineering helped him to discover the 36 partial derivative inertial terms and to invent 36 algorithms for solving them.

His Lectures

As an invited speaker at the world’s largest gathering of mathematicians on July 8, 1991, in Washington, D.C, Philip Emeagwali presented his discoveries and inventions to the field’s foremost experts. From 1993 to 1998, Emeagwali represented the world’s two premier computer societies, The IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery, as their Distinguished Speaker at Computer Science Departments in the United States. As the headline speaker at a top science festival (on January 30, 2009, near Calcutta, India), he held 7,000 attendees spellbound for 40 minutes. When he stepped down from the stage, the audience mobbed him like a rock star.

How “41 Patent Claims” Was Shortened to “Patents”

Stories evolve, often subtly, with each retelling by others. The retelling of the story of “the 41 patent claims” that Philip Emeagwali told on July 8, 1991 at the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics evolved into “41 patents.”

This conference is to mathematics what the World Cup is to soccer—unique and held only once every four years. Emeagwali told mathematicians at the conference that he had filed 41 patent claims, which covered the 36 algorithms he had invented for solving the 36 partial derivative inertial terms that he had discovered.

As non-mathematicians retold his story, his “41 patent claims” was shortened to “41 patents.” Similarly, his young age of 35 years, published accurately in a 1989 interview, was repeated over and over for 21 years, which contributed to a few mistaken tabloid media attacks claiming Emeagwali had “lied about his age.”

Philip Emeagwali told the mathematicians at the International Congress that his 41 patent claims were precise legal definitions of his algorithms for solving the 36 partial derivative inertial terms that he had discovered. He filed his 36 algorithms as 36 patent claims to avoid losing some of his rights and protection under the law. He also filed five additional dependent claims, bringing his total number of claims to 41.

Emeagwali stopped pursuing his patent claims because the United States Patent and Trademark Office told him that his 36 algorithms were discoveries, not inventions. He argued that they were inventions, not discoveries, explaining that although the Second Law of Motion encoded within his algorithms was not patentable, his algorithmic techniques that embodied that Second Law within supercomputers should be, because they are the discrete analogue of the 36 partial derivative inertial terms that he had discovered. In other words, they were functions with input and output.

Patenting algorithms was a gray area in 1989.Today, it is possible to patent algorithms; however, because he publicly disclosed his inventions in 1989, the one year filing deadline passed.

Importantly, scientific progress is only measured by discoveries, not patents. To discover means to see something that is previously unseen or unknown. Philip Emeagwali discovered that petroleum reservoir engineers summed only three forces, instead of summing all four forces within their oilfields. The word “invent” means the contrivance of that which did not before exists. He invented 36 algorithms for summing all four forces.

To invent means to originate or create as a product of the inventor’s ingenuity. It does not mean to patent. In supercomputing, it means to correctly formulate and solve one of the “Twenty Grand Challenges” at a world-record speed. Philip Emeagwali simulated the flow of oil, water, and gas— with the forces correctly summed—at the then unheard of speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second. It was a Grand Challenge that was of interest to Mobile, but completed by one man in 1989.

In summary, Philip Emeagwali received a standing ovation at the International Congress for telling the field’s foremost experts that: Exxon was falsifying its petroleum reservoir equations and that the equations taught in universities are not equating to what’s happening inside a petroleum reservoir. It is an unpatented invention just as the internet is an unpatented invention. Your dictionary defines the word “invention” without using the word “patent” and groundbreaking inventions, such as the Internet, cannot be patented because it has many fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles. Most importantly, the discoverer is the first teacher of his discovery to humanity.

http://www.saharareporters.com/article/emeagwali-responds-what-did-emeagwali-discover

The truth remains that he never made any of those claims but the media made it for him.I still believe he has made the most impact on computing than any black man.

Thank God for Emeagwali. If one consider the kind of attack Nigerian's have hauled against him - one begin to wonder if doing positive thing is ok in this country - It seems only crooks are praise with chieftaincy title here and there.

egift:

Thank God for Emeagwali. If one consider the kind of attack Nigerian's have hauled against him - one begin to wonder if doing positive thing is ok in this country - It seems only crooks are praise with chieftaincy title here and there.

There are two sides to this coin, namely; Nigerians desperately hate smart people, it is part of an endemic inferiority complex; in the converse, Emeagwali's fault remains his gross overhyping, even though he is undeniably smart.

Beaf:

There are two sides to this coin, namely; Nigerians desperately hate smart people, it is part of an endemic inferiority complex; in the converse, Emeagwali's fault remains his gross overhyping, even though he is undeniably smart.

You got that right. Absolutely.

Eh, it sounds a lot less impressive the more he describes it. 36 derivatives, a patent for each, lol.

The lecture series stuff though is pretty good, though it seems more like the IEEE and ACM let you give a talk at member chapters. So it isn't as if he was an employee or whatever of either organization, just a guy giving a talk about his work. Which is good, but talking about your work is something every academic does.

a lot of us have had brief flashes of brilliance at one point or another in our lives - some of us have been able to sustain them. . . others haven't

emegwali comes across as an unemployed graduate with a 2'2 who keeps harping about how he led his state in jsce examinations - an achievement for that stage in his life, but of increasing insignificance the older you get.

that article was also posted on nigeriavillagesquare. plenty of smoke and mirrors

note the man does not actually say anything concrete - he blathers about scribbled equations used by exxon, without anything to back that up - is he being paid royalties by exxon?

As an invited speaker at the world’s largest gathering of mathematicians on July 8, 1991, in Washington, D.C, Philip Emeagwali presented his discoveries and inventions to the field’s foremost experts. From 1993 to 1998, Emeagwali represented the world’s two premier computer societies, The IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery, as their Distinguished Speaker at Computer Science Departments in the United States. As the headline speaker at a top science festival (on January 30, 2009, near Calcutta, India), he held 7,000 attendees spellbound for 40 minutes. When he stepped down from the stage, the audience mobbed him like a rock star.

just sad - inferences everywhere - is it too hard for him to name the institutions or the top science festival held in calcutta india - which i remember not for being a technical hub, but home to some of india's most desperately poor and disenfranchised?


the dude is just a different variant of the moder snake oil salesman - the public speaker with motivational self help book line

If Emeagwali had made some unique assumptions and derived some Mathematical equations from Navier Stokes based on these unique assumptions, his techniques would be studied in every Computational Fluid Dynamics class.

Unfortunately, the same paper was rejected as a PHD thesis, and Emeagwali himself has "lost" such an important paper.

Does Emeagwali not think that his technique to bypass Darcy's law for laminar flows would have been written into every Mathematical modelling textbook by now?

I actually believe those that say he's a fraud cos he makes some spurious claims. How can someone who taught Mobil how to extract extra oil from reservoirs be eking out a living as a motivational speaker. I haven't even seen Emeagwali write any Governing equation in any of his writings. He must have forgotten how to after 21 years of inactivity.

How come another non fraudulent Nigerian has not been able to win a Gordon Bell prize that this fraud won or even solve 1 of the grand challenges that the fraud solved. It seems other peoples PHD and Msc is even more fraudulent than the one this fraud claims to have

Ibime:

If Emeagwali had made some unique assumptions and derived some Mathematical equations from Navier Stokes based on these unique assumptions, his techniques would be studied in every Computational Fluid Dynamics class.

Unfortunately, the same paper was rejected as a PHD thesis, and Emeagwali himself has "lost" such an important paper.

Does Emeagwali not think that his technique to bypass Darcy's law for laminar flows would have been written into every Mathematical modelling textbook by now?

I actually believe those that say he's a fraud cos he makes some spurious claims. How can someone who taught Mobil how to extract extra oil from reservoirs be eking out a living as a motivational speaker. I haven't even seen Emeagwali write any Governing equation in any of his writings. He must have forgotten how to after 21 years of inactivity.

he claimed racism was the reason his thesis was rejected. well that claim was tossed out in court.

abagoro:

The truth remains that he never made any of those claims but the media made it for him.I still believe he has made the most impact on computing than any black man.

Wrong. Mark Dean.

And Emeagwali's original website is the source of all his bogus claims. He has had no impact and never will. Frauds are forgotten.

well, simulation and naiver strokes equation are very advance knowledge. if he had done nothing in this fields, then he would have nothing to present to the world

Notice how "quiet" this thread is, here people in the know are making statements, not those who jump on the "tribal victimization" bandwagon and shout the loudest.

I am not into supercomputing but while doing some research involving Artificial Intelligence (ANN), I came across an article on an international Scientific magazine bothering on Emeagwali's works on oil reservior simulation and the hard nut the dude cracked for the world. So I am in no doubt that this guy is what we call "BRAIN" in the scientific community.

It is a sad reflection that most Nigerians hate success with hardwork and their mind set seems to be engraved in diatribe. If this dude was and/or is fraudulent, then I think all the officials of the state of Michigan are also fraudulent and the FBI/CIA are an unserious agency for letting him make all these claims without anything to back them up.

As for the poster who said giving talk in IEE is just something any dude can be invited to do, you must be kidding! I would question if you have every presented a paper in a regional summit of experts, and compare that with Emeagwali presenting his papers in a conference of who is who in the world of advanced computational Mathematics.

Bros Emeagwali you can say whatever you like. You have already been found guilty by many and already sentenced. Such folks will always find a way to puncture your defence. Just find a cure for AIDS if you really want them to hail you.

Ibime:

If Emeagwali had made some unique assumptions and derived some Mathematical equations from Navier Stokes based on these unique assumptions, his techniques would be studied in every Computational Fluid Dynamics class.

Unfortunately, the same paper was rejected as a PHD thesis, and Emeagwali himself has "lost" such an important paper.

Does Emeagwali not think that his technique to bypass Darcy's law for laminar flows would have been written into every Mathematical modelling textbook by now?

I actually believe those that say he's a fraud cos he makes some spurious claims. How can someone who taught Mobil how to extract extra oil from reservoirs be eking out a living as a motivational speaker. I haven't even seen Emeagwali write any Governing equation in any of his writings. He must have forgotten how to after 21 years of inactivity.

I like to respond to folks who knew the subject matter. Some of the write-ups stemming from the news media seem to have issues mixed-up. I am not an expert on high-performance and parallel computing, the fact remains the Emeagwali was able to resolve a problem in liquid flow with certain wetted-perimeters through the use of Navier-Stokes equation. It is very erroneous for people to insinuate that Esson-Mobile is using Emeagwali computational derivatives in their crude oil reservoir. We must understand that Mobile fielded a team that came first in the highest flow rate and won prize money as Emeagwali did in the performance category in 1989. In fact, the Mobile team achievement was adjudged the best due to flow rate attained.

Whether Emeagwali achievement through the detects of Reynolds flow (Transport theorem), Newtonian fluids hence Navier-Stokes equation, Eular equation, Bernouli equation and Darcy’s Law, the fact remains he is still the only African that can be mentioned in such capacity as far as high-performance and parallel computing is concerned.

Granted there has been exaggeration of the facts, I do not think Emeagwali is a fraud. Currently the list of Gordon Bell ACM awards cadre is dominated by individuals from Asian, North America and European continent.