Emeagali The Great Scientist

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking
Emeagwali helped give birth to the supercomputer, the technology that spawned the Internet.
1972-2005 emeagwali.com
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THEORIZING THE INTERNET LYRICS OF THE EARTHS FLUIDS THE ANSWER IS IN THE WIND A ROMANCE IN SIXTEEN DIMENSIONS EIGHTEEN DIFFICULT TO SOLVE EQUATIONS
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AN OPERA WITH 65000 PROCESSORS THIS I REMEMBER THE INVISIBLE SECOND THE ANSWER HAS CHANGED TIMELINE OF COMPUTING ORATIONS FOR EMEAGWALI SCRAPBOOK PHOTOS POSTERS SPEECHES AT EMEAGWALI.COM
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Memories of British West Africa Times Remembered From Colonial Africa Memories of Post Colonial Africa Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned! One Day We Had to Run! For Most of it I Have No Words The Day of the Long Night The Graves Are Not Yet Full Chronicles from a Refugee Camp A Child Soldiers Story After the War Was Over They Call Me Calculus Out-of-This-World Astronomer Out of Africa
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On to Oregon I Want to Be a Mathematician A Nigger in Oregon I Wish to Tell You that Celestine Has Been Killed The Soul of an Astronomer I The Homeless Dont Push the River The Fear of Black Intellect Am I the Anti-Christ? Did They Heard Me When I Cried "Eureka!"
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They Laughed When I Told Them But Their Laughter Turned to Stunned Silence 481 To Be Young, Gifted and African in America I Am a Black Mathematician
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A Black Physicists Apology How to Silently Explode an Atomic Bomb My Search for the Holy Grail of Immortality Globalization Not New; Look at Slave Trade Why Is America Battling for Africa? Why Superstitious Africans Believe Weird Things How Do We Reverse the Brain Drain? One Wife, One Child Do I Believe in God? Why Is Oil-Rich Nigeria So Poor? Waiting for Oil Cargo The Party's Over; The End of Oil
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When Bill Clinton called Philip Emeagwali the Bill Gates of Africa, his admirers protested that Bill Gates is the Philip Emeagwali of America. Both were misleading comparisons, said Emeagwali. The reason, he explains, is that It is like comparing apples and oranges. I am a supercomputer scientist while Bill Gates is a software entrepreneur. The scientist creates the knowledge while the entrepreneur takes it, monetizes it, and runs with it. In 1989, Emeagwali created the knowledge that thousands of electronic brains, called processors, could outperform a supercomputer. His discovery was against the prevailing dogma: the president of the leading supercomputer company told The New York Times [11/29/89]: "We can't find any real progress in harnessing the power of thousands of processors."
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Emeagwalis discovery implied a new generation of supercomputers and consequently made the headlines. Not only was it faster, it was also one hundredth the cost of a supercomputer. It was new knowledge that was monetized immediately by manufacturers who redesigned their supercomputers to incorporate thousands of processors. The supercomputer was reinvented. Now obsolete is the $10 million a piece vector processors, that worked by performing fast calculations on a long string of numbers called
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vectors.
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The New African ranked Emeagwali (third from bottom right) as historys greatest scientist of African descent (September 2004). The reinvented supercomputer costs up to 400 million dollars a piece. It eats more power than a city of 5,000 residents and is powered by 65,000 electronic brains or interconnected processors. The supercomputer is 100,000 times faster than a desktop computer and occupies the space of four tennis courts. It is presently a six billion dollars a year industry. A major scientific discovery is often achieved by a team of 24 co-discoverers supported by a 400-person laboratory or 400-million-dollar grants. How then did an African immigrant who worked alone, jealous of his independence, indifferent to others skepticism of his wild theories achieved a breakthrough in supercomputing? He recalled:
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American scientific research was a white man's game in the mid-1970s. I was forced to play by their rules, work alone and without pay for 15 years, even though I was the best. Working alone had its disadvantages and advantages. He had nobody to play the devils advocate or become his sounding board. He conceived his ideas alone, argued them alone and refined them alone. On the positive side, there was no committee to stop him from attempting to do the impossible.
Most importantly, he became a sort of jack-of-alltrades that enabled him to draw from a constellation of ideas, see the interconnectedness of knowledge and the totality of the problem. He explained the advantages of seeing the big picture or the forest instead of the trees:
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The modern scientist is overspecialized and knows more and more about less and less. I try to connect the dots across the foci of physics, mathematics and computing. These three subjects form an intimately interconnected and continuous entity but we erroneously categorize them as separate. It was an assignment that called for an ace mathematician, a supercomputer wizard and master physicist, all rolled in one. The scientific equivalent of the grueling, long-term endurance Ironman triathlon race 2.4-mile swim, 26.2-mile run, 112-mile bike without stopping. Others accomplished their supercomputing Ironman race as an 8-person relay team while Emeagwali did it alone. The route to his solution was original and treacherous. The number of scientists who could understand the solution could take a taxi together to a seminar given by Emeagwali. The self-confidence to tackle and solving the problem alone was what brought him acclaim and respect. He had a total of six major dots and maybe six minor dots
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and his genius was in mastering and connecting those dots, not in understanding a few of the dots. They cast away my discovery, only to re-discover it ten years later. The stone which the builders rejected, as rough and unsightly, became the headstone of the corner, he said. He holds the opinion that no African can get to the top of the scientific field without making immense sacrifice, working harder and smarter and alone.
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This Earth Simulator supercomputer occupies the space of three tennis courts. It has 83,000 copper wires and 2,900 kilometers (1800 miles) of cables, which is long enough to connect the cities of New York and Dallas. Working alone for 15 years, facing constant rejection because his HyperBall theorized Internet was against the prevailing dogma, and drawing from knowable knowledge from several subspecialties, Emeagwali proceeded to tackle a problem so daunting it made a U.S. government list of the twenty most difficult problems in computing. He explained: It took me 15 years to become an overnight success. The difference between a scientist that worked on a problem for 15 years and one that spent five years is like the difference between an artist with 15 crayons
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and one with 5 crayons. The artist with 15 crayons will produce more exciting pictures. Emeagwali took an unconventional, synergistic approach of reformulating Newtons Second Law of Motion as 18 equations and algorithms; then as 24 million algebraic equations; and finally programming and executing those equations on 65,000 processors at a speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second. It was a high-risk but high-yield research. The Second Law of Motion is to physics what the 26 alphabets are to the English language. Starting from the Second Law is the equivalent of descending from the top of the highest mountain. It is the equivalent of the constitution to physicists. Just as the U.S. Declaration of Independence begins with We hold these truths to be self-evident so the physicists declares the Second Law to be self-evident
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It [Second Law] is the alphabet of the language of physics. The English language loses its richness if the alphabet B is removed. Some mathematical models lose their accuracy because the Second Law was violated, Emeagwali explained. He, in a manner of speaking, demonstrated that prior mathematical models were unconstitutional and his enforced the Rule of Law, specifically, the rule of the second law of motion in all fluids that flows underneath the Earths surface. The Second Law of Motion is an absolute that had always existed and is true for all times and places. It was discovered 350 years ago by Isaac Newton, not invented. Newton put his Second Law into words while Emeagwali scientized the motion of fluids underneath the Earths surface by incorporating the Second Law. He reformulated the Second Law into abstract mathematical symbols for an infinite set of points within the Earths interiror and then into algorithms for a finite set that can be stored within a
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supercomputer. Formulas similar to Emeagwalis eighteen equations can be used to simulate the birth of the universe and the motion of fluids in distant galaxies. It is because the motion of fluids underneath the Earths surface can be mathematicized as well as the motion of inanimate objects in our universe of such phenomenal physics-inspired equations that mathematics was dubbed the Queen of the Sciences. Because mathematical equations can embody a-priori knowledge of laws of physics some have conjectured that we can conceptually predict the motion of all objects in our universe by solving the appropriate set of partial differential equations. In fact, 90 percent of supercomputer cycles were consumed in solving differential equations. The journey to my discoveries was a 15-year marathon, not a 15-day sprint, he said. His 65,000 processors, 24 million equations
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and 3.1 billion calculations were three world records, in 1989, that garnered international headlines. That breakthrough achieved by weaving together 41 discoveries in mathematics, physics and computing won him the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which is the equivalent in the supercomputer industry of the Nobel Prize. Perhaps, only one in a million scientists can boast of making a breakthrough discovery. Are we approaching the end of knowledge? Theres a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Charles H. Duell, a former Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899 who tendered his resignation to Congress because Everything that can be invented has been invented. His predecessor, Henry Ellsworth, wrote to Congress in 1843: The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end. Fast forward a century, a scientist was hired to read all the journals in his specialty and write a monthly
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report on the new discoveries. He said: Often I am tempted to write only two words: Nothing happened.
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Artists rendition Emeagwalis discovery that the collective power of 65,000 weak processors (chickens) are more powerful than a 400 million dollar supercomputer (an oxen). This new knowledge was the crucial turning point that inspired the reinvention of supercomputers to utilize thousands of processors. 1989
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Emeagwalis Theorized Internet
Theorizing the Internet If history were to repeat itself, the supercomputer of today will become the computer of tomorrow. And the supercomputer of today will become the Internet of tomorrow, or vice versa. The latter prediction is based on the fact that the Internet comprises millions of computers that are interconnected, like a supercomputer, but occupies the space of the entire Earths surface.
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Artists rendition of the HyperBall network invented by Emeagwali. The supercomputer spawned the Internet by creating the need to invent a network that connects supercomputer scientists to their supercomputers.
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In fact, the supercomputer and the Internet are powered by similar technologies. The supercomputer is powered by thousands of processors interconnected as a hypercube, while the Internet is powered by millions of computers interconnected as a hyperball. The supercomputer is a hypercube because a hypercube topology is easier to program while the Internet evolved to a hyperball because the Earth is spherical. The network that is the heart of the Internet is shaped like an irregular hyperball. Emeagwali invented the regular hyperball network and in 1988 using a hypercube supercomputer powered by 65,536 processors to establish the world record of 3.1 billion calculations per second.
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Books on the History of the Internet (including the above) credited Emeagwali for theorizing a HyperBall supercomputer network, which we now know as 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 known today as the 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. Polls rank Emeagwali as the modern scientist most searched-for on the Internet and the readers and editors of New African voted him historys 35th greatest African and the greatest scientist of African descent.
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Hard Lessons from History
Lyrics of the Earths Fluids Emeagwali's 3.1 billion calculations per second was used to solve one of the twenty most difficult problems in supercomputing, the simulation and recovery of oil and gas from underground reservoirs. The latter discovery was accomplished by weaving together 41 discoveries in physics, mathematics (nine partial differential equations) and supercomputing (nine algorithms, networks, etc). Each discovery builds satisfactorily on the last, until at the 41st discovery 3.1 billion calculations which was like climbing a peak of understanding. Emeagwalis Networks
Three of the twelve progressively complex hypercube communication paths used by Emeagwali to harness the power of 65,536 processors. Each red dot represents the physical position of each of his 4096 computational nodes. Emeagwali programmed a 12th order network with 4096 computational nodes. The image above is for the 5th, 6th and 7th order paths, respectively.
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For the preceding 18 equations and algorithms, the petroleum industry regards Emeagwali as an unorthodox innovator [who] has pushed back the boundaries of oilfield science (Upstream, January 27, 1997). Emeagwali contributed to the body of knowledge used in reservoir simulators --- tools used to determine the best strategies for injecting water into an oilfield to eject oil and gas out of that field. The simulation of huge oilfields was classified in the 1980s by the United States Government as one of the twenty most difficult problems in the supercomputing field. Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize for, in part, solving the preceding problem by successfully encoding Newtons Second Law of Motion --- a set of factual statements that describe reality --- as nine (partial differential) equations used for seeing inside an oilfield. Because his new equations incorporated inertial forces, they were more truthful, more accurate and will enable the geologist recover more oil.
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An oil rig The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM News, May 1990) wrote that his [Emeagwali's] calculation is of real importance and solves problems faster..., and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Software, May 1990) stated that the amount of money at stake is staggering.
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Philip Emeagwali developed 18 equations and algorithms for supercomputers. emeagwali.com
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Emeagwalis HyperBall Theorized Internet
info@emeagwali.com Page 34 of 517
The Answer is in the Wind
The Answer is in the Wind Emeagwalis Theorized Internet [Excerpt from a speech delivered by Emeagwali at an information technology conference in Ottawa, Canada 2005]
The supercomputer is perceived as a new technology but the fundamental idea that drives it is as old as humanity. This fundamental concept is simple - a large problem is made small and solvable when it is shared amongst thousands of brains, processors or computers. Or many hands make light work. Supercomputers utilize thousands of processors because a thousand processors are generally a thousand times more powerful than a single processor. But a few years ago, this idea was a mystery. We did not fully understand how to apply this idea to harness the power of thousands of processors. Because we named it a supercomputer we first think of computing when the word supercomputer is mentioned. We focused on computing, but that wasnt the problem.
This is a figure of the topology of my supercomputer communication space. The entire 4,096 nodes that I used cannot be seen by the human eye. The lines represent the information pathways of my 4096 supercomputer nodes of my twelve-dimensional hypercube supercomputer. Each node (symbolically
represented by a point) has twelve communication channels (represented by a line) emanating from it. The problem was about communication between and within supercomputers. And my focus was on communicating. You can have a hundred of the greatest minds in the world in one room and working on the same problem, but if they dont communicate, it is no different than having any one of them working the problem alone.
This is a figure of the topology of my theorized Internet comnunication space.
I invented the HyperBall network because prior ones were planar networks covering only parts of the United States. The Internet has converged to my HyperBall "world wide" network covering the entire Earth. In the 1990s, the vector supercomputer was reinvented as a hypercube supercomputer. In a few decades, the supercomputer will "disappear" into the Internet and, in essence, converge to a hyperballshaped computing and communicating device. Then we will say that the supercomputer is the network, or that the HyperBall network is the supercomputer, or that the HyperBall network is the Internet. My HyperBall network was originally invented for communication between computers and within computers. Communication between computers is called the Internet and that within a computer is called supercomputing. Because we like to put a human face on the invention Internet, we ask: Who is the father of the Internet? So: Who invented the Internet?
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My answer, perhaps not so romantic as some would wish is that no one individual invented the Internet. In reality, the Internet has many fathers, as well as mothers, uncles, and aunts. And the Internet was not born at one place or time. It grew organically and incrementally. The invention of the Internet followed different trails that are non-intersecting, although they converge into what appears to us to be a single technology, the Internet. We use this collective noun to refer to all the bits and pieces that make information move the way it does these days.
The above thermometer can only measure past temperatures. My mathematical equations can compute or measure tomorrows temperature. I program a supercomputer to use my mathematical algorithms to transform todays data temperature, wind speed, humidity, etc. --- into tomorrows weather. In a sense, it enables the meteorologist to operate a thermometer that measures tomorrows temperature.
The above weather vane measures past wind strengths while my partial differential equations provides the forecast seen on television.
The above barograph keeps a daily record of the atmospheric pressure while my equations forecasts tomorrows pressure.
This system of handwritten mathematical equations is the engine that drives weather forecasts distributed by meteorological agencies.
In 1920s, a science fiction writer conjectured that the state of the atmosphere with respect to temperature, wind, pressure can be forecasted by employing 64,000 "human computers" to solve the governing system of mathematical equations. These equations (see above) are codified laws of physics that act as a virtual thermometer, wind vane, barometer and various weather instruments. Unlike physical weather instruments, "mathematical instruments" could be used to forecast future weather.
I visualized each of my 64,000 beams of search light as having the shape of either a hexagonally or pentagonally prism. I was inspired by the idea of harnessing 64,000 human computers. I commenced this research project in May 1975 at Oregon State University on how to harness 64,000 digital computers. That research project led to my discovery of the HyperBall network and my reformulation of the HyperBall as a Hypercube. I won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize for using a 64 binary thousand processors interconnected as a Hypercube, which was inspired by the 64 thousand human processors conceived in the 1920s.
I tessellated the entire Earth's atmosphere with 64,000 prisms of light.
Finally, I tessellated the outer boundary to create my HyperBall.
New knowledge builds upon old knowledge and the names of most contributors were lost in the mist of antiquity. For instance, I developed nine algorithms which I implemented as 24 million algebraic equations. My work therefore builds upon the knowledge of the ninth century Persian mathematician Muhammed idn Musa Al-Khwarizmi who published an influential book Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah. The words AlKhwarizmi and Al-jabr wa'l were corrupted to algorithm and algebra, respectively. I could not have solved 24 million algebraic equations without building upon the knowledge developed 1680 years before Christ was born by an African mathematician named Ahmes who wrote the oldest mathematics textbook with solutions of equation. There were many discoveries and inventions that I built upon to make my mine.
Equally important is that I did not solve these problems during a flash of genius nor did I make my discoveries through serendipity or the proverbial luck of working on the right topic at the right time. They occurred over a fifteen year period with the inspiration coming from interaction between mathematics, physics and supercomputer science. Because I devoted 15 years to acquiring a deep understanding of seven subspecialties which is the baseline knowledge for solving these problems. I knew a lot that is knowable in those fields, I developed a gut instinct on how to solve problems and that I was working on an important problem, I was able to see the importance of inertial forces and how the new equations will lead to faster calculations more clearly. The journey to my discovery was a marathon, and I would have failed if I had sprint as if it was a hundredyard dash. The process of conducting scientific research is a science on its own, and a sense you need to be an alchemist of some sort to become a good chemist.
Contrary to what many thought, I did not rely exclusively on brute mathematical force to derive my 18 equations and algorithms. It was my knowledge of physics that helped me discover that inertial forces were missing in the century-old equations used by mathematicians and petroleum scientists. My nine mathematical discoveries called - partial differential equations - are symbolic codification of Newtons Second Law of Motion. With my knowledge of the laws of physics, I re-introduced the inertial forces and discovered my nine equations for mathematicians and nine algorithms for computer scientists.
Emeagwali continued his research in his HyperBall International network for weather forecasting in this
building (8060 13th Street, Silver Spring, Maryland) which was the office of the United States National Weather Service from 1982-86. A rainstorm is governed by the laws of motion described in introductory physics textbooks. The Second Law of Motion is codified as partial differential equations to be solved on a supercomputer.
A Romance in Sixteen Dimensions
Original communication paths of Emeagwalis HyperBall as an Earth-sized supercomputer and theorized Internet. We now think of it as the practical Internet
A Romance in Sixteen Dimensions Emeagwali on the Hypercube Excerpt from a lecture delivered at NASA Ames 1990]
The above is are illustrations of the information pathways of my hypercube supercomputer showing the Two, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-dimensional hypercube configurations, respectively. Also, the six figures illustrate the doubling procedure that I used to generate my 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 computational nodes, respectively. My procedure can be generalized so that higher dimensional hypercube networks can be constructed from lower dimensional ones. Each hypercube is constructed by moving the next lower hypercube along an additional direction. For example, the 7-dimensional hypercube was
constructed by moving the 6-dimensional hypercube along the seventh dimension. Most people think a hypercube is a cube of four (and higher) dimensions. As a network topologist, I define a point as a zero-hypercube, a line segment as a 1hypercube, a square as a 2-hypercube, and a cube as a 3-hypercube, and so on.
A secret that lead to the success of my programming of 3.1 billion calculations per second was that the hypercube topology enabled me to concretely and
mentally visualize the name, location and 12-nearest neighbors of each of my65,536 processors that were arranged as 4096 clusters of 16-processors which were configured as a 12-dimensional hypercube. It seemed like magic. What I did was to project our three-dimensional world onto a 12-dimensional hypercubic space. The fourth dimension is that beyond 'Length, Height, Width.' The fifth and higher dimensions are similarly derived. You can put a square inside a cube, but not vice-versa. Similarly, I projected a three-dimensional problem into an imaginary 12-dimensional space to enable me distribute my problem between the processors of my 12-dimensional hypercube computer. I plotted sixteen hypercube graphs by connecting the vertices of the next smaller graph. The links of my hypercube computer correspond to the edges of my associated hypercube graph.
Then I colored my graphs so that I could see the twelve independent paths of my twelve-dimensional hypercube. I use these independent paths to deliver a message between any two processing nodes that are the farthest possible distance apart. Finally, I identified every node in my hypercube computer by a unique binary number which consists of 0's and 1's. I generated 4096 12-digit numbers which will fill up 50 pages with only zeroes and ones. As a mathematician, I visually examine the patterns in two 12-digit binary numbers 000 001 000 000 and 010 001 000 000 tell they are nearest neighbors, while 000 111 000 000 and 000 000 111 000 are a distance of 6 communication channels apart. I had to know whos who and where each processor is located before I could command it to obey my instructions.
The above diagram demonstrates the information pathways of my hypercube supercomputer with 32 nodes. The 32 pink dots represent 32 computing nodes, and the five lines, emanating to and from each node, represent communication channels. I programmed a supercomputer with 12 bi-directional communication channels emanating to and from each node to solve some of the problems described by the
U.S. government as the most difficult in supercomputing.
The communication paths of my eight-dimensional hypercube. Each processor (symbolically represented by a point) has eight communication channels (represented by a line) emanating from it. I was pleased when it made the headlines that I programmed 65,536 processors to perform the worlds fastest computation (i.e. 3.1 billion calculations per second in 1988). Yet, I never set out to establish a world computing record. My calculations made the headlines because it had, at that time, been widely believed that it would be impossible to program thousands of processors to outperform conventional supercomputers. Although many people remember my supercomputer calculations, my research was never on supercomputers, per se. It was on the kernel of knowledge that powers both the supercomputer and the Internet. My focus was on the conceptual
foundation of the next-generation Internet, namely computation and communication. In the 1980s, the debate among supercomputer manufacturers was: Is it practical to use thousands of processors? The IBM and supercomputer giants said: no. I answered yes and I was proven right. The essence of my research was to demonstrate that thousands of inexpensive processors could outperform any supercomputer. In other words, I wanted to create the knowledge that supercomputers should utilize thousands of processors. I added new knowledge that is incorporated inside all supercomputers. Since my discovery - in part - opened and prepared the new technology for commercialization, I am considered a pioneer in supercomputing.
My wife (Dale) and I at the Gordon Bell Prize award ceremony that recognized my contribution to supercomputing. [Cathedral Hill Hotel, San Franscisco, California. February 28, 1990]
Emeagwali's 18 Equations That Couldn't Be Solved
Eighteen Difficult to Solve Equations (Emeagwalis Eighteen Equations, E3, pronounced E cube) Philip Emeagwali was praised by Upstream - an international oil and gas industry publication - as an unorthodox innovator [who] has pushed back the boundaries of oilfield science. CNN extolled him for using his mathematical and [super]computer expertise to develop methods for extracting more petroleum from oil fields. The Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM News, May 1990) wrote that his [Emeagwali's] calculation is of real importance and solves problems faster..., and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Software, May 1990) stated that the amount of money at stake is staggering. The reservoir simulator - mathematical codification of the laws of motion - is a tool for smarter, deeper and cleaner oil production. Reservoir simulators help determine optimal strategies for injection water into
an oilfield and ejecting oil and gas out of it. Petroleum geologists use it to see inside an oilfield with greater clarity. In state-of-the art practice, water is injected into a reservoir to produce more oil. In next-generation reservoir simulators, inertia could be injected to more accurately "see inside" the oilfield. Emeagwalis eighteen equations will enable geologists to see inside an oilfield with greater clarity.
The simulation of huge oilfields was classified in the 1980s by the United States Government as one of the twenty most difficult problems in the supercomputing field. Emeagwali explains:
While the mathematics behind my 18 equations and algorithms is complex the fundamental idea is simple. Using an advanced form of calculus, called partial differential equations, I codified the well-known Newtons Second Law of Motion as 18 equations and algorithms. That is, my equations are the factual
statements described by the Second Law of Motion expressed in algebraic symbols. Algorithms based upon the latter factual statements can be iterated (projected) into the future to forecast tomorrows weather or determine the amount of oil that can be recovered. An algorithm is a precise rule specifying how to solve an equation. It can be loosely compared to a culinary recipe, although algorithms are generally repetitive and more complex. Consider the quadratic equation which we all studied in school:
The algorithm for solving it is X equals negative b, plus or minus square root, b squared minus 4ac, all over 2a.
Similarly, I reformulated my nine partial differential equations, into nine difference equations (the corresponding algorithm) for solving them at 24
million places within the Earth and at thousands of different times. (Unlike a single quadratic equation, it will take you forever to solve 24 million algebraic equations.) The end result is that my nine algorithms are repeated about a trillion times by a supercomputer. I invented these algorithms because they make my equations solvable on a computer. This is when it pays to be a jack-of-all-trades scientist who can coordinate between different subjects. A mathematician can only formulate the equations with the assistance of a physicist. It takes a computer scientist to formulate the algorithms and solve them on a supercomputer. Neither the mathematician, physicist or computer scientist understands what the results signify, or how it affects flows along the little oil streams and rivulets underneath the Earths surfce. It takes a geologist to ask and answer the question: What does it all mean? To a layperson, my equations appear to be a strange hieroglyphics of numbers and symbols. However, it connects physics and mathematics because my 18 formulas build on the four dominant forces within an
oil field, namely pressure, gravitation, viscosity and inertia (acceleration). Your weight is a measure of the acceleration force exerted by the Earth upon your body. If you stand on a bathroom scale inside an elevator (amusement or roller coaster ride) your weight increases (decreases) as you travel upward (or downward). Do you recall feeling lighter as the elevator goes downward? Previously, petroleum geologists assumed that the amount of acceleration forces (oil weight) when oil flows towards and upwards of an oil well are negligible. Using the elevator analogy, I proved that acceleration forces could not be ignored within an oil field. Utilizing advanced mathematical methods and incorporating inertial forces, I developed a more powerful set of 18 supercomputer formulas that will
increase the amount of oil recovered. Because, I include inertia, my equations were not longer parabolic as the conventional ones. Instead, they became hyperbolic which made them more suitable for supercomputer programming. The U.S. government called it one of the twenty most difficult problems in supercomputing. The petroleum industry purchases ten percent of all supercomputers to increase the amount of oil recovered.
If you accelerate upwards inside an elevator by 10 m/s2, your weight will double. If you decelerate by 5 m/s2, you lose half your weight. If I cut the elevator cable and you will become weightless and cannot pour a glass of water for a brief moment. I incorporated this knowledge in the 18 equations I discovered.
The old petroleum reservoir models implies that the weight of oil remains constant as it travels towards and upwards of an oil well (or elevator).
From my perspective as a mathematical physicist, the Earths atmosphere is a reservoir of air, the ocean is a reservoir of water and an oil field is a reservoir of petroleum. Newton's Second Law of Motion states that the forces within any reservoir of fluid (air, water or petroleum) are unbalanced and that the acceleration produced within the reservoir is proportional to the force impressed. The inertial forces are incorporated by weather forecasters but are ignored by petroleum geologists. First, I demonstrated that petroleum geologists were violating Newton's Second Law of Motion which is applicable throughout the universe - and then I mathematically codified and incorporated this universal law as new system of partial differential equations that could be used to recover more oil.
An Opera With 65,000 Processors
An Opera With 65000 Processors
Because as a mathematician I think in the abstract, I could wear the hats of a meteorologist, geologist or nuclear weapon designer. My equations are abstraction of a weather-field, oilfield or nuclear explosion site which allows me to fast forward into the future and see and understand these phenomena with greater clarity, focus, and a fresh dimension. My final calculations were conducted on an experimental machine belonging to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and also the headquarters of supercomputing.
An artist's rendition of a nuclear explosion. A nuclear blast is simulated by using a supercomputer with thousands of processors to solve a complex and coupled system of partial differential equations. These equations are symbolic expressions of the laws of physics and chemistry. Fundamentally, the mathematical equations used in nuclear explosions and weather forecasting are similar, except that one is classified and the other non-classified.
For example, weapon designers, meteorologists, and geologists perform similar calculations: temperature, pressure, and density during a Hiroshima nuclear explosions, Earths atmosphere or petroleum reservoir, respectively. The physical difference is that a nuclear explosion takes place in an instant (or what mathematicians describe as small time and space scales) while a petroleum reservoir is operated for about 20 years. Also, the goal is to ensure that the conditions within a nuclear weapon are extreme. It is the extreme temperatures and pressures of a nuclear weapon that obliterates everything within its path. As a mathematical physicist, I know that since a nuclear explosion is about motion and therefore, must be governed by the same laws of motion that govern flows within the Earth's atmosphere and oilfields. In other words, my discovery was a valid proof-ofprinciple for nuclear weapons designers that thousands of processors could be harnessed to simulate nuclear blasts.
Emeagwali invented 18 equations and algorithms for supercomputers. emeagwali.com First, I used an advanced form of calculus called partial differential equations to codify Newtons Second Law of Motion.
Second, I solved them within an imaginary twelvedimensional mathematical universe called hypercubes. Geometers define the fourth dimension of the hypercube as that beyond Length, Height, and Width. The fifth and higher dimensions are similarly derived. In a theoretical sense, I mentally hopped into a twelve-dimensional geometrical universe to solve a three-dimensional physical problem. My approach may seem counterintuitive to a layperson, but mathematicians understand that it is sometimes easier to escape into higher dimensions. Science fiction writers, use this logic to describe how a person can escape a homicidal gunman by running into the fourth dimension. Similarly, a surgeon in a fourth dimensional world, which encompasses our universe, can operate inside your intestines and remove cancerous cells without cutting. One of the secrets to my success was that my twelve-dimensional hypercube supercomputer provided extra communication paths for my information to travel.
In performing my calculations, I divided a huge oilfield into 65,536 smaller oilfields and then distributed these problems to 65,536 processors that were networked together as a 12-dimensional hypercube supercomputer with 16 processors at each of its 4,096 nodes. Its graph is obtained by replacing each node of the 12-dimensional hypercube supercomputer by a 16-vertex two-dimensional mesh.
The graph of the 16-processors at each computational node of my hypercube supercomputer.
Emeagwali used the laws governing the motion of planets to compute the motion within oil reservoirs. He is a trained astronomer and his first professional job offer was as an astronomer for the U.S. Naval Observatory.
This I Remember
This I Remember TIMELINE: Philip Emeagwali 1921. James Nnaemeka Emeagwali (father of Philip) born in May in Onitsha, Nigeria. 1938. Agatha Emeagwali, ne Balonwu, (mother of Philip) born on August 7 in Onitsha. 1954 Chukwurah Emeagwali born on August 23 in Akure, Nigeria. 1955 Baptized as Philip 1960 Enrolls in 1st grade in January. Nigeria gains independence from Britain on October 1.
This I Remember
1962 Philip (far right) in family photo taken on December 24 in Uromi, Nigeria. 1966 Nigerian military overthrows elected government. Civil uprising with 30,000 dead. 1967 Nigerian-Biafran war begins in May. One million died in 30-month war. 1968 Emeagwali family fled Onitsha for the fourth and final time.
This I Remember
1969 Emeagwali conscripted into the Biafran army in August, sent to Oguta war front. 1970 Biafran army defeated in January. Emeagwali is discharged from the Biafran army. 1973 Emeagwali wins a mathematics scholarship to study in the U.S. 1981 Marries Dale Brown on August 15 in Baltimore, Maryland. Continues scientific research at National Weather Service. 1983 Obtains U.S. permanent residency Green Card visas for his 35 closest relatives. 1987 Programs 65,536 electronic brains, called processors to perform the worlds fastest calculation.
This I Remember
1989 Wins the Gordon Bell Prize alone, the equivalent in the supercomputer industry of the Nobel Prize. 2000 Bill Clinton extols Emeagwali as one of the great minds of the Information Age.
This I Remember
2004 New African magazine poll ranks Emeagwali as historys greatest scientist of African descent.
2005 Philip, Dale and Ijeoma Emeagwali, June 8.

The Invisible Second
Worlds Fastest Calculation
The Invisible Second In 1987, Emeagwali programmed 65,536 electronic brains, called processors, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (the birthplace of the atomic bomb) to perform the worlds fastest calculation. Emeagwali explains: I was asked to share today the story behind my supercomputer discovery. It would require several books to tell the whole story, but I will share a short one that I have never told anyone. The journey of discovery to my supercomputer was a titanic, one-man struggle. It was like climbing Mount Everest. On many occasions I felt like giving up. Because I was traumatized by the racism I had encountered in science, I maintained a self-imposed silence on the supercomputer discovery that is my claim to fame. I will share with you a supercomputing insight that even the experts in my field did not know then and do not know now. In the 1980s, supercomputers could perform only millions of calculations per second and,
therefore, their timers were designed to measure only millions of calculations per second.
But I was performing billions of calculations per second and unknowingly attempting to time it with a supercomputer timer, which was designed to measure millions of calculations per second. I assumed my timer could measure one-billionth of a second. It took me two years to realize my timer was off a thousand fold. I was operating beyond a supercomputers limitations, but I did not know it. The supercomputer designers did not expect their timers to be used to measure calculations at that rate. I almost gave up because I could not time and reproduce my calculations which, in turn, meant I could not share them, two years earlier, with the world. After years of research, my supercomputers timer was the only thing stopping me from getting the recognition I deserved. I realized the timer was wrong, but I could not explain why. I spent two years mulling over why the timer was wrong. It took two long and lonely years to discover why I could not time my calculations.
My 3.1 billion calculations per second, which were then the worlds fastest, were simply too fast for the supercomputers timer.
Emeagwali reprogrammed, in a virtual sense, his supercomputer timer tick interval to enable him measure one trillionth of a second. What I learned from that experience was not to quit when faced with an insurmountable obstacle and that believing in yourself makes all the difference. I learned to take a step backward and evaluate the
options: Should I go through, above, under, or around the obstacle? Quitting, I decided, was not an option. Indeed, the old saying is true: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Looking back, I learned that most limitations in life are self-imposed. You have to make things happen, not just watch things happen. To succeed, you must constantly reject complacency. I learned I could set high objectives and goals and achieve them. The secret to my success is that I am constantly striving for continuous improvements in my life and that I am never satisfied with my achievements. The myth that a genius must have above-average intelligence is just that, a myth. Geniuses are people who learn to create their own positive reinforcements when their experiments yield negative results. Perseverance is the key. My goal was to go beyond the known, to a territory no one had ever reached.
I learned that if you want success badly enough and believe in yourself, then you can attain your goals and become anything you want in life. The greatest challenge in your life is to look deep within yourself to see the greatness that is inside you, and those around you. The history books may deprive African children of the heroes with whom they can identify, but in striving for your own goals, you can become that hero for them and your own hero, too. I once believed my supercomputer discovery was more important than the journey that got me there. I now understand the journey to discovery is more important than the discovery itself; that the journey also requires a belief in your own abilities. I learned that no matter how often you fall down, or how hard you fall down, what is most important is
that you rise up and continue until you reach your goal. Its true, some heroes are never recognized, but whats important is that they recognize themselves. It is that belief in yourself, that focus, and that inner conviction that you are on the right path, that will get you through lifes obstacles. If we can give our children pride in their past, then we can show them what they can be and give them the self-respect that will make them succeed.
Emeagwali (with 65,000 processor supercomputer in the background), Cambridge, MA. 1990
The Answer Has Changed
The Answer Has Changed TIMELINE: Supercomputer & Internet The word computer was coined 600 years ago but the computer has been reinvented over and over. Hence the terminology is the same but the technology is different. Actually, reinventing computers is a process that has been going on for thousands of years. The abacus, a computing device invented two thousand years ago by the Chinese, was reinvented as a Table of Logarithms. Then the logarithm was reinvented as a slide rule. The slide rule was reinvented as a mechanical computer which was succeeded by the digital and parallel computers, respectively. Therefore, computers have been progressively refined and reinvented from manually-operated abacus to a more complex machine that is powered by thousands of processors. The supercomputer was not invented at a particular time and place. It had existed for millennia. It was reinvented as a vector supercomputer in the 1970s
and then reinvented as a parallel supercomputer in the 1990s. The parallel supercomputer existed in the 1980s as an experimental machine but demonstrating that it was more powerful than any (vector) supercomputer led to its upgrade to a production machine. Today, all supercomputers are designed as a parallel computer. In fact, since the supercomputer of today was the computer of yesterday, we might be witnessing the reinvention of the computer. How do we define the reinvention or turning point. A re-invention must go through three goes through three stages of acceptance. The first is the it will not work stage. IBM's top computer designer, Gene Amdahl, believed that it is not feasible to use thousands of processors to solve one practical problems. His skepticism was described in his famous Amdahl's Law. In 1989, 64,000 processors to forecast the weather was considered impossible. The second is the even if it works it will not be useful. Seymour Cray, founder of the largest supercomputer manufacturing company argued that thousands of
weak processors will not work as well as a handful of powerful vector processors. Finally, the re-invention gains acceptance and those who rejected it reclaims it as it was our idea. The turning point was the discovery that 65,000 of the weakest processors work faster together than the most powerful vector processors. It was this discovery that inspired supercomputer manufacturers to incorporate thousands of processors in their machines. During a 20th anniversary alumni reunion, a father decided to audit a supercomputer programming course he previously took. That day, the professor decided to give a surprise quiz. After reading over the test, the father raised his hand, looking upset he queried: These are the same questions you gave me as a student.
That's true, said the professor. The questions are the same, but the answers are different, he continued with a chuckle. How can that be? the visitor queried. The supercomputer has been reinvented, the question is been directed to the 65,000-processor supercomputer and the answers have changed. The visitor nodded his head in agreement and conceded. The answer to the question Who invented the supercomputer? changes each time the supercomputer is reinvented. Because the computer has been reinvented over and over, the answers have changed over and over. Take for example, the supercomputers of the 1940s which were powered by one processor. The
supercomputers of the 1990s were reinvented and powered by up to 65,000 processors. The question: How do you program a supercomputer? will have a different answer in 1970 and 1990. In 1970, the computer weather forecast was executed on a one-processor supercomputer. Today, the Earths atmosphere is divided and re-distributed to thousands of processors.
The above teletype model 33 keyboard and punch tape terminal was the first computer that Emeagwali programmed in 1974. It was invented in 1962 but used thru the 1970s as input and output devices for mainframe computers.
Emeagwali took his first computer programming course in 1974 at Western Oregon University (Photo: Philip Emeagwali, March 28, 1974)
The Universal Timeline of Computing
Timeline of Computing 469 B.C. The oldest computing equipment, the Abacus, invented in China.
An Abacus computing equipment 200 B.C. The water clock invented in the Nile Valley of Africa. This technology inspired the development of early computers. 100 A.D. Mathematician Heron describes the first sequence control, a technique that made it possible to predict an output for a given input which, in turn,
laid the foundation for computer programming or the prediction of an output for a given input. 476 A.D. The number zero introduced by Indian mathematician Aryabhatta. The Internet and a supercomputer only understand two numbers: 0 and 1. 800 A.D. Muhammed idn Musa Al-Khwarizmi publishes his influential book Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah. The words Al-Khwarizmi and Al-jabr wa'l were corrupted to algorithm and algebra, respectively. 1398 The word "compotystes" is coined by the writer Trevisa to describe a person that calculates time. It corrupted to computer. 1621 The second oldest computing equipment, the slide rule, is invented.
1922 Lewis Richardson wrote that 64,000 computers would be needed to race the weather for the whole globe. In 1975, Emeagwali theorized the latter as an interconnected HyperBall
supercomputer, which is roughly equivalent to the Internet, but implemented it as a hypercube in 1987. 1946 The supercomputer was invented as a single electronic computer. 1970s The Internet was invented as a dozen interconnected supercomputers around the United States. 1980s The Internet was reinvented as millions of interconnected computers around the world. 1990 The supercomputer was reinvented as thousands of interconnected computers.
Orations for Emeagwali
Orations for Emeagwali A Commencement Oration Son of Africa, supercomputer pioneer, a visionary father of the Internet, we honor you. We heed Kwame Nkrumahs warning that, socialism without science is void in honoring you for crowning Africa with shining scientific discoveries. Nnamdi Azikiwe said, Originality is the essence of true scholarship. Creativity is the soul of the true scholar. You exemplify both. Your discovery inspired the reinvention of computers into supercomputers
and helped spawn the Internet. You discovered a formula that enables supercomputers powered by 65,000 electronic brains called "processors" to perform the worlds fastest calculations. You theorized that 65,000 computers around the Earth could forecast the weather. This theoretical supercomputer, with 65,000 nodes, is known today as the Internet. For the audacity of your theorized Internet, the book History of the Internet and CNN called you a father of the Internet. You reformulated Newtons Second Law of Motion as 18 equations and algorithms; then as 24 million algebraic equations;
and finally you programmed and executed those equations on 65,000 processors at a speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second to solve one of the twenty most computation-intensive scientific problems.
Your 65,000 processors, 24 million equations and 3.1 billion calculations were three world records that garnered international headlines, made mathematicians rejoice, and caused your fellow Africans to beam with pride. When you won the 1989 Gordon Bell prize, the Nobel Prize of Supercomputing, then-president Bill Clinton called you, one of the great minds of the Information Age. The New African magazine readers
ranked you as history's greatest scientist of African descent. Mr. Chancellor, for his groundbreaking discoveries and for the sheer force of his mind, I ask you to confer the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, upon PHILIP EMEAGWALI. Excerpted from a commencement oration delivered by a university president in June 2005.
Clinton Extols Emeagwali as a Great Mind Excerpted from a televised speech delivered by Bill Clinton (as president) on August 26, 2000. The White House One of the great minds of the Information Age is a Nigerian American named Philip Emeagwali. He had to leave school because his parents couldn't pay the fees. He lived in a refugee camp during your civil war. He won a scholarship to university and went on to invent a formula that lets computers make 3.1 billion calculations per second. (Applause.) Some people call him the Bill Gates of Africa. (Laughter and applause.) But what I want to say to you is there is another Philip Emeagwali -- or hundreds of them -- or thousands of them -- growing up in Nigeria today. I thought about it when I was driving in from the airport and then driving around to my appointments, looking into the face of children. You never know what potential is in their mind and in their heart; what imagination they have; what they have already thought of and dreamed of that may be locked in because they don't have the means to take it out. That's really what education is. It's our responsibility to make sure all your children have the chance to live
their dreams so that you don't miss the benefit of their contributions and neither does the rest of the world. It's in our interest in America to reach out to the 98 percent of the human race that has never connected to the Internet.
Bill Clinton walking towards the National Assembly of Nigeria with his daughter, Chelsea, in Abuja, Nigeria August 26, 2000 to
deliver speech in which he extolled Philip Emeagwali as one of the great minds of the Information Age.
Bill Clinton in Abuja, Nigeria.

Ikenga for Philip Emeagwali By OBU UDEOZO, 14th February, 2002 our landscape is a catwalk of songs; praise singing explodes on every tongue. trumpets and cymbals more sonorous than April thunder escort long drums and flutes in their intoxicated tunes. our native land is a glow with melodies nno, aka ikenga elephants float on your right thumb to compel the spotlight upon us; truth cracked after your tessellated models tore the digital divide: their fresh Ayatollah of malice; truth cracked, when your chicken over oxen theory
defied the deified Seymour Cray to deliver the crown of science upon the African Sun this hemisphere is a Christmas of trumpets our laughter season. God who planted the onyx stone of Gad within us, is redeeming that pledge of our sunrise. II. our folks are summoned across the four winds for a steaming fiesta over Chineke's smile upon us; so, aka Ikenga
astride the surrealist oche ekwu may courtiers rain you comfort with peacock feathers. our fatherland is drunk with songs. what Psalms shall we engineer for him who beyond seven seas and seven terrains captured the daybreak of foreign gods. your Papacy in science radiates in alien tongues. what algorithms of dance steps shall unravel this immanence of our race? Philip Emeagwali, your Madison Square Garden feat
over fractious fraternity at the hot horizons of knowledge redeemed the millennial eclipse of our ravaged soul. III. your connection machine, and honey-combed logic in massive parallelism awoke drybones our God's gift which vindicates Nwagu Aneke that the children of Cush shall outshine the first born; but they slapped conspiracy across your paths, padlocks and platinum gates saluted your dreams. yet your Chi lit your anointed breath
for the Onitsha pilgrim whose pocket betrayed even at home to pluck the gold medal of the computer age; a tale Bill Clinton sprayed to a world agape; a sugared tale in our innocent ears your trainloads of prizes and caravan of honours across the globe a dizzying statistic that at last, God has poured His Sovereign Spirit upon all flesh. our current godlike mode of fecundity and genius across the globe is God's incomprehensible equity
upon all mankind; whether Black or Yellow or Blue Philip Emeagwali, aka Ikenga astride the surrealist oche ekwu may courtiers slake your thirst with divine wine. mythic king of our bloodline we polish our music with lightening and erect anthems sky high at our Maker's altar for a wonder child and proof that the lamb and leopard shall chew divine grass in Mount Zion at the appointed feast of our Christ and Redeemer King. - Amen -
OBU UDEOZO is a professional painter, poet and clinical psychologist. He lives in Jos, Nigeria.
The ikenga statue is found in sacred shrines of the Igbo-speaking people of southeastern Nigeria. The
ikenga is believed to possess a protective spirit and provides success and achievement. The word "ikenga" translates to "man's life force" or "place of strength."
Emeagwali Had An Idea
By Wina Marche @2002 Dr. Emeagwali had an idea. to him it was very clear that bees planned and constructed honeycombs that can't be obstructed by inefficiency. So, he thought a computer made that way ought to be powerful, efficient, fast. It was and better that the past! His 65,000 processors fit a design, you might say, that bees would divine. 3.1 Billions per second calculations! To the Doctor citations and acclamations! His world's fastest computer now predicts the weather's when, and how.
We'll know of future global warming and when and where the earth is storming Dr. Philip, how does he do this? Wouldn't it be intellectual bliss to have a similar needed skill and be the first person to fill a world wide technological need! Father helped Dr. Philip to succeed. Father's decision when Philip was age nine was worthy of a genius or sage. His decision- Philip would every day solve 100 math problems - no work, no play. Today Philip believes the daily drills increased his mediocre math skills. We should salute his father's decision that shaped a mind for creative precision. Father Emeagwali was a visionary who understood the "necessary". 1989, for Philip was the year, the outstanding year, of his career. He won the Gordon Bell Prize, known
as the Nobel of computing. A milestone his supercomputer invention, helps the field of petroleum by a better gas yield and will eventually lower gas costs thus less unrecovered gasoline losts. Dr. Emeagwali's computer invention may some day mean more attention, power, for personal computer users with more options and more choosers. He is husband, father, achiever research scientist, a modern believer in technology, and the hope for more young students to open the computing door. Wina Marche is the author of "Poetry of AfricanAmerican Invention."
King god Philip Emeagwali - A "Living Hero Moment"
Hoteph Beloved Ones: Ancestral greetings, blessings, loving, and light throughout all creations and above. King god Philip Emeagwali Because of the honor you give to the Afrikan Carbon Family, because of the progress that you seek, because of your resolution to lead the Afrikan people back to their righteous mind-set not abandoning them there, because of the seen and unseen power in you, you fall into the position of "A Living Hero," and this is the moment. King god Emeagwali helped give birth to the supercomputer, the technology that spawned the
Internet. King god Philip Emeagwali is credited for inventing a formula that allows supercomputers powered by thousands of processors to perform billions of calculations per second -- a discovery that made international headlines and inspired the reinvention of supercomputers. The supercomputer comprises of thousands of networked computers and the Internet also comprises of millions of networked computers. The supercomputer spawned the Internet. Emeagwali's 1970s hypothesis on 64,000 networked computers around the Earth led to his programming of 64,000 processors inside a big box to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second, a world record in 1989. For the latter achievement, he won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which is the Nobel prize of supercomputing. Born in 1954 in a remote Nigerian village, Emeagwali was declared a child math prodigy. His father nurtured his skill with daily arithmetic drills. In 1967,
the civil war in his country forced him to drop out of school at age twelve. When he turned fourteen, he was conscripted into the Biafran army. After the war ended, he completed his high school equivalency by self-study and came to the United States on a mathematics scholarship at age nineteen.
emeagwali.com
emeagwali.info emeagwali.ws
As true Afrikan Queen goddesses, it is our duty to eloquently equip our Afrikan King gods/Queen goddesses with the most vital and essential tools and weapons that will strengthen our Afrikan male/female Warriors on the Front-line. The eloquent words from the Queen goddesses lips, are to: encourage equip motivate For Iron Sharpens Iron. A nation will rise no higher than its woman, and the profound eloquent words from the Queen goddesses lips to a Warrior (male/female) lighten his/her load, which frees him/her up to do battle.
King god Philip Emeagwali, as you enter any room, may your presence always have the appearance of a gazelle, like a Stag on the mountain. May the wisdom that comes forth from your lips, from your heart, a love which consumes with fire for the Afrikan Carbon Family, terrify nations, and shake kingdoms with truth. I plea with you Mighty Warrior Philip Emeagwali. Let no people, place or thing, cause you to miscarry or abort your mission. Carry your mission to its full term. I plea with you My Beloved brother Philip Emeagwali to do nothing to cause an interruption for your love for the Afrikan Family. I do not need to look for you among the flocks of other men. To you My Beloved brother
Philip Emeagwali,
continue to, excite the hearts, souls, and mind of the people (with truth) like a mare excites the stallions of Pharaoh's chariots. I plea with you Mighty Warrior Philip Emeagwali, to continue to ride on in majestic to victory for the defense of truth and justice. Your strength will win us great victories, and Afrika Will BE BORN AGAIN. Afrika is for the Afrikans. May these words continue to fill you with energy, power, and Spirit for the struggles to come, and there are many. For if we get tired of racing against men (oppressors), how can we race against horses. If we cannot stand up in open country (america/Diaspora), how will we manage in the jungle (Afrika). Many have joined in the attacks against us. Let harmony (which confuse the enemy), with understanding be the shield that protects you. I know a King god when I see one, and I know how
and when to BOW. King god Philip Emeagwali I AM my brothers and sisters Keeper. Honorable Marcus Garvey. Up! Up! You mighty ones. You can accomplish what you WILL. And, WE WILL WIN. WE WILL WIN. WE WILL WIN. I KNIGHT ALL Mighty Warriors with the only tools and weapons I have, and that is the power and weapon of Eloquent Words. I speak to you from THEE Frontier of THEE Future on THEE Outskirts of THEE City of Eternity, and from THEE Chambers of Thee Holies of Holies, where Spiritual secrets resides. Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika! Afrika!
Here is loving you. Hoteph goddess IsIs Akkebal/Iya of Afrika (Holy Spirit lover) Mother of ALL Goddesses Goddess Of Afrika Being THEE Change THEE World Needs To See
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E PLURIBUS UNUM A Father of the Internet, Philip Emeagwali By Margaret Aghadiuno @2003
Once a refugee standing on long lines awaiting his meal, Sleeping in bombed-out shelters, willing himself to survive war, From logarithms and slide rules to batches of punch cards, Emeagwali learned the Fortran lingo at the speed of light; Propelled by an ethereal sense of vocation and vision, Demonstrating like a lion his proclivity to seek and to conquer those challenges most abstruse and exacting, With bold, daring, unprecedented and intrepid thinking;
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Denied funds and easy access to research facilities, Ostensibly because his research was not deemed "serious" By those who failed to see his scintillating accomplishments, He tapped deeply into the unmapped boundaries of science; Treated less than an equal, working without pay or perquisite, Doors were constantly shut by those surprised he was not white, The tanned color of his skin condemned by peers as a stigma, With belief in the putative ignorance of Africa;
He took the thorny path to dispel the myth of error, Their aberration of a science genius from Africa;
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Where others found a wall replete with obfuscating visions, He unravelled an untapped vastness of possibilities; With sedulous focus, perception and unique enterprise, A lone, assiduous research into the matrix of science, He beat the odds to break all the barriers of time, space and depth, With only his wife Dale's unwavering belief in her Philip;
Building on Richardson's fantasy on human computers, He simulated and surpassed the computational speed of the elite supercomputers once placed out of his reach, With revolutionary equations deemed "impossible"; He harnessed the power of 65,000 processors, To perform the fastest computations ever known to man,
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Billions and billions of calculations per second he solved, For which feat Emeagwali received the Gordon Bell prize;
With genius unparalleled since Einstein, Newton, Equiano, He extrapolated the mystery of constellations, From observing the natural geometries and patterns, In the efficient construction of bees' honeycombs; He extended the barriers of interference and diffraction, and expanded the vectorial form of Navier-Stokes equations, Resolving heuristical arguments and algorithms, Momentum equations, convective motions, Crays polemic;
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Like a soaring eagle he continues his path to glory; Undeterred by bias, rejection or discrimination, He developed the theory of a computer hyperball, With his tessellated models for parallel computing, And the counter-intuitive hypercube paradox, Mass equations, helicity, chirality, dualityHe unified the laws of nature, physics and geology Testament to a great mind that defies imagination;
A father of the internet, and a true son of the earth, He's the apotheosis of modern African genius.
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Margaret Aghadiuno is a linguist, poet and writer.
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Oscar Winner Denzel Washington Implored to

Star as Emeagwali
Open Letter by a Screen Writer. Hollywood, September 22, 2003
Washington (right) earned Oscars and starred in the films Training Day, Glory, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate, Malcolm X and The Hurricane.
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Dear Mr. Washington: My name is Tiana Boulet. I am writing you because I think this project deserves someone with the magnitude of your talent and the stature of your celebrity. Please bear with me. I don't think you'll regret it. When I read this man's story, I cried for him, for me, for people of color, and for anyone who has felt oppressed by injustice and discrimination. I'll call our protagonist Emmy. Emmy was raised in Nigeria, with eight siblings. His family subsisted on a dollar a day. At age 15 he had to drop out of school because the family was too poor to continue his education. He was conscripted into the army as a child soldier to fight the Biafran civil war. His father was brutally beaten simply for possessing a newspaper that the Biafran's viewed as being subversive.
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Emmy was motivated by poverty, and his environment, to value education, because he saw it as his only way out. This view was likely fostered by his father, whose edict was: "No work, no play, 100 math problems a day." Emmy took a high school equivalency test, and the SAT test to enter college. He passed with high scores. He took a correspondence course at the University of London, because they charged no tuition. Securing a scholarship, he decided he wanted to be educated in the United States. He ended up taking computer science, and was stuck with the tedious task, relegated to him by others not wanting to do it, of programming mainframe computers. Stuck in this tedious job, he became expert at it.
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Within the next five years he developed a mathematical formula to string 64,000 far flung computer processors around the earth to forecast the weather globally. He was inspired by a meteorologist, Lewis Frye Richardson (1881-1953), who had fantasized 64,000 human computers (or clerks) networked around the globe to predict the weather. Even Frye considered his idea science fiction. Emmy was born within the year after Frye died, but Emmy believed he could make it possible by designing a scheme to use electronic computers. Oh, did I forget to tell you that Emmy's college classmates gave him the nickname "Calculus," and that the 100 math problems his father gave him had to be done in one hour, programming his mind to be razor sharp and lightning swift. Emmy felt that if his mind could be programmed to make calculations so swiftly, he could program computers to make calculations even faster, for the
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desired effect he wanted. That's where he got the idea to accelerate computer speed by duplicating many times over the traditional way a computer works. Traditionally, a computer has one processor and one memory. But Emmy used 64,000 processors, each with a memory of its own, thereby, enormously accelerating computer speed to a record 3.1 billion calculations per second. What would this mean in the world of computing? It meant naysayers had been proved wrong, and this unlikely experimenter, whose ideas had been frowned on and labeled impractical, ridiculous, and frivolous, had risen above the condescension of the traditionalist elitist, and was demonstrating what they were saying was impossible-that 64,000 computers could be tied together. Today, 64,000,000 computers are tied together. It meant that Emmy had solved one of the 20 most difficult problems in the computing field. It meant that now supercomputers could network worldwide, with a brevity and speed that would transform the world. It meant a radical change of thought and application for computer scientists and giant computer companies, and is now the standard technology for supercomputers (costing 30 to 100
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million dollars a piece), and this technology will eventually extrapolate to the personal computer sitting on your desk. It meant that multimillionaire computer entrepreneurs, and anyone collaterally earning their millions with computers-such as the Petroleum Industry--can do so more efficiently.
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While the computer scientist were laughing at Emmy, claiming his formula must be flawed, or he must be mistaken in his calculations, Emmy had developed an international network that was tantamount to, and predated, the World Wide Web. But it was unrecognized-an idea before its time-and dismissed as trivial. Now, though, he's experimenting on a World Wide Brain, that will futuristically eclipse the World Wide Web. Since 1989, when Emmy won the Gordon Bell Prize, the computer science world's Nobel Prize, the Business world is looking back at Emmy's global network creation, and finally bestowing upon this genius his deserved honor, and labeling him, "A Father of the Internet." As Emmy puts it, someone said that an overnight success in Hollywood takes 15 years in the making. Emmy said he spent five years being laughed at, five years struggling without pay, and the next five years
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living off of $750 a month for research. He had previously applied for research funding from IBM, but had been denied. During the years that Emmy was trying to convince the world of what he had, and doors were continually being closed to him. White computer scientists were being supported, and advancing with that support. Twenty-five years ago, for five years, he worked unpaid for the United States National Weather Service Research Laboratory, while white co-workers were paid. Now an IBM designer claims that he reinvented the computer because he has used only four processors to reach the 3.1 billion calculations per second. Wonder where he got the idea!
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Emmy made an interesting point, he brought out what minorities unilaterally know, the white authors are paid to write about white people, because that's who the white people want to hear about. In essence, historians are paid not only for what they write about history, but also for what they don't write. In an interview with the National Society of Black Engineers, Emmy was asked if he thought that the connection between the words genius and computer dissuade many blacks from going into that field because they don't feel they are smart enough to do that. Emmy said he would remind those people who feel that they aren't smart enough, that the mathematicians and famous inventors of the past graduated at the bottom of their class, including Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Emmy's high speed processor formula is not limited to the world of computers. At present, he is working with petroleum companies, his formula allowing them to "see" oil reserves, and giving them the ability to extract more oil resources than was previously possible.
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Unfortunately, advances in science and technology are not always used for constructive reasons. In December of 2000 Saddam Hussein sought to use Emmy's invention to more accurately target his seemingly innocuous war weapons-Play Stations loaded with germs for biological warfare. I can't fully explain why I cried when I read his story, except to say that when I was growing up, there was relatively only one black face on television-Bill Cosby's, and there were no blacks on commercials. The degree of invisibility in the media, and the stereotypes conveyed when we did see ourselves was traumatizing to the psyche. And what hurts even now, is that even though blacks are highly represented on commercials now, other minorities still aren't, and it's excessively difficult for blacks and other minorities to sell a screenplay. It seems discouragingly hopeless at times. Thank you so much for doing Antwone Fisher, and giving opportunity where there was none. What I enjoyed most was the content of his character, persevering in the face of adversity, and letting it mold him into a better person.
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It's just good to know that there are people, right now, today, using their gifts and abilities, in spite of the misconceptions, jealousies, scathing criticisms, hardships, and discrimination they face on a daily basis.
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Biafran refugees fleeing in Umuahia Oct 1968. Emeagwali was a Biafran refugee and child soldier.
People like these lift our moral and make the world seem brighter. We need to know about them. Emmy, a child prodigy, mathematical genius, civil-oceancoastal-marine engineer/astronomer, inventor, and
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his contribution to the world, deserves recognition. If the rights can be procured, I would like to write his story, and I would like you to play him. Will you?
If you'd like to know more about him, his name is Philip Emeagwali, and his website is at: Emeagwali.com. And if you'd like to see some of my work, my website is at http://www.geocities.com/tmboulet.
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Mr. & Mrs. Denzel Washington
Also, Mr. Washington, I'm an unknown aspiring screenwriter, with just a high school education. So you
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may not want to trust me to handle such a project. I'm not sure I trust myself. But even if you get someone else to write Emmy's story, please do it. I think the world would like to learn about, who some call, "the black Bill Gates". I can't wait to see it! I called him Emmy, because I read his story on his website, and about six hours later, I was moved to write you about it, but my internet service was interrupted that same day, and I couldn't remember how to spell his name, and couldn't get back on the internet to find out. So, coming from memory, some points could be inaccurate. I tried to faithfully convey what I read on his site, but quite frankly, I'm intellectually unable to comprehend some of the more technical aspects. The breadth of this man's achievements alone, run into eight pages. I hope, I've encapsulated the essence of his achievements. One night, years ago, I caught a movie a little after it had begun, and I couldn't turn it off, because the young black man on it was so fascinating. And even though everyone on the movie was looking down on him, his beautiful smile, and charismatic personality
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glittered. I thought, can't they see he's gorgeous, charming, witty? He shines so brightly the world is going to notice him. That was "Carbon Copy," and a few years later you exploded on the scene. Just like I could identify your talent when I saw it. I can identify talent in myself, I just need someone to help me open the door, so it can shine. Thank you for reading this. Sincerely, Tiana Boulet P.S. Though you are the one that I would most like to play this role, I'm going to have to ask others, simultaneously as well, because I've written to other actors about other screenplays in the past, and never so much as received a response. It may never have even gotten into their hands. So I can't wait for a response from you that may never come.
Scrapbook Webmistress Note: The above is one of several letters, scripts and proposals weve received from Hollywood and Nollywood. We are sharing this letter to share our inside story with you.
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CHRONOLOGY - Emeagwalis Eighteen Equations 1680 BC The African mathematician Ahmes wrote the oldest mathematics textbook with solutions of equation. 325 BC Euclid, a father of geometry was born in the Valley of River Nile, Africa. He published The Elements, the second most reprinted book in history. 800 AD Muhammed idn Musa Al-Khwarizmi publishes his influential book Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah. The words Al-Khwarizmi and Al-jabr wa'l were corrupted to algorithm and algebra, respectively. 1621 Johann Keplers The Epitome of Copernican Astronomer banned by the Catholic Church.
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Kepler's laws of planetary motion laid the foundation to the universal laws of motion. 1666 Sir Isaac Newton formulates the universal laws of motion and gravitation and co-invented calculus. 1759 Leonhard Euler synthesized the techniques of calculus and Newtons Second Law of Motion to
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obtain the first partial differential equations governing frictionless fluid flow. 1845 George Stokes improved upon Eulers and Naviers (1822) work, by rederiving the Navier-Stokes equations. 1856 Henry Darcy formulates "Darcy's Law," the foundation of petroleum reservoir simulation. 1946 The modern electronic computer is invented, making it practical to develop petroleum reservoir simulators. 1989 Emeagwali reformulates Newtons Second Law of Motion as 18 equations and algorithms; then as 24 million algebraic equations; and finally programming and executing those equations on 65,000 processors at a world-record speed of 3.1 billion calculations per second.
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Emeagwali discovered 18 equations and algorithms for supercomputers. emeagwali.com
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Scrapbook Reproductions of documents needed for student projects including audio and video streams of speeches and readings. Our goal is to develop an interactive scrapbook that will be experienced rather than consumed. We also have rare photographs, rare memorabilia, and facsimiles of handwritten mathematical equations posted at http://emeagwali.com/photos/forpublishing.html.
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The Ant Nebula
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The Emeagwali Family (L-R) Francis Ndaguba Emeagwali, Edith Chinwe Emeagwali, James Nnaemeka Emeagwali, Martin Ikemefuna Emeagwali, Agatha Iyanma Emeagwali, Charles Emeagwali, Florence Onyeari Emeagwali,
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Philip Chukwurah Emeagwali (Agbor Street, Uromi, Nigeria. December 24, 1962)
Emeagwali (in dark shirt and 2nd from right of last row of five students) in his last year at a selective allboys catholic school. At the time this photo was taken, the students in this photo also know Emeagwali as Calculus because he was good in the subject and considered a math whiz. This photo was taken about a year after the Nigerian-Biafran civil war ended. The harsh post-civil war economy forced many students to drop out of school. Within shouting distance is the residence of a young up-and-coming bishop named
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Francis Arinze. (Photo: Christ the King College, Onitsha, Nigeria. 1971)
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Photo taken at the time Emeagwali completed his high school equivalency by self-study (i.e. passing the entrance examination to the University of London), obtaining near perfect scores in mathematics and physics parts of the SAT and Achievement Tests, an achievement that enabled him to come to the United States on a mathematics scholarship at age nineteen. [Emeagwali also studied for a year towards the bachelors degree in mathematics as an external student of the University of London but abandoned it after he won a scholarship to the United States.]
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Philip and Dale Emeagwali at the Gordon Bell Prize award ceremony, Cathedral Hill Hotel, San Franscisco, California. February 28, 1990. (Three months later, the became proud couple parents to their first child, Ijeoma. In 1996, Dale Emeagwali was
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voted the Scientist of the Year by the National Technical Association for her contributions to cancer research.)
Emeagwali in his supercomputing lab at which he discovered that the power of thousands of processors could be harnessed to solve the most difficult problems in science and engineering, which were described by the United States government as the 20 grand challenges. (Photo from: Detroit Free Press, Page 1E, May 29, 1990)
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Emeagwali and a hypercube supercomputer in the background
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As a National Lecturer for the Association for Computing Machinery and a Distinguished Visitor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society, Emeagwali lectured in several universities on his new 18 equations and algorithms
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(Photo: May 9, 1996, The Science Museum of Minnesota, Saint Paul.)
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Take a cybertour through our Internet historic website which averages one million visitors a month!
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Emeagali The Great Scientist

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It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

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It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

It Was the Audacity of My Thinking

Emeagwalis Theorized Internet

Emeagwalis Theorized Internet

Emeagwalis Theorized Internet

Emeagwalis Theorized Internet

Emeagwalis Theorized Internet

Hard Lessons from History

Hard Lessons from History

Hard Lessons from History

Hard Lessons from History

Philip Emeagwali developed 18 equations and algorithms for supercomputers. emeagwali.com

Emeagwalis HyperBall Theorized Internet

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The Answer is in the Wind

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The Answer is in the Wind

This is a figure of the topology of my theorized Internet comnunication space.

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The Answer is in the Wind

The Answer is in the Wind

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