Philip Emeagwali

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Philip Emeagwali (born 1954) is a Nigerian-born computer scientist/geologist who was one of two winners of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, a prize from the IEEE, for his use of the Connection Machine supercomputer - a machine featuring over 65,000 parallel processors - to help analyse petroleum fields.

1 Biography
2 Awards
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Biography

According to his website, Emeagwali was born in a remote Nigerian village in 1954. He dropped out of school in 1967 because of the Nigerian civil war. When he turned fourteen, he was conscripted into the Biafran army. After the war he completed a high-school equivalency through self-study and came to the United States to study at university under a scholarship. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oregon State University in 1977. He received a master's degree in environmental engineering from George Washington University in 1981, and another master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1986. He also received a post-master's degree in ocean, coastal and marine engineering from George Washington University in that year. He was also working as a civil engineer at the Bureau of Land Reclamation in Wyoming during this period.

[edit] Awards

He has received numerous other awards, ranging from one from the World Bank-IMF Africa Club to being voted the "35th-greatest African of all time" in a survey by New African magazine. His achievements were quoted in a speech by Bill Clinton as an example of what Nigerians could achieve when given the opportunity [1].