Dr. Philip Emeagwali Inventor of the World's Fastest Computer

Dr. Philip Emeagwali, who has
been called the "Bill Gates of
Africa," was born in Nigeria in
1954. Like many African
schoolchildren, he dropped out of
school at age 14 because his
father could not continue paying
Emeagwali's school fees.
However, his father continued teaching him at
home, and everyday Emeagwali performed mental
exercises such as solving 100 math problems in
one hour. His father taught him until Philip "knew
more than he did."
Growing up in a country torn by civil war, Emeagwali
lived in a building crumbled by rocket shells. He
believed his intellect was a way out of the line of
fire. So he studied hard and eventually received a
scholarship to Oregon State University when he
was 17 where he obtained a BS in mathematics. He
also earned three other degrees – a Ph.D. in
Scientific computing from the University of Michigan
and two Masters degrees from George Washington
University.
The noted black inventor received acclaim based, at
least in part, on his study of nature, specifically
bees. Emeagwali saw an inherent efficiency in the
way bees construct and work with honeycomb and
determined computers that emulate this process
could be the most efficient and powerful. In 1989,
emulating the bees' honeycomb construction,
Emeagwali used 65,000 processors to invent the
world's fastest computer, which performs
computations at 3.1 billion calculations per second.
Dr. Philip Emeagwali's resume is loaded with many
other such feats, including ways of making oil fields
more productive – which has resulted in the United
States saving hundreds of millions of dollars each
year. As one of the most famous African-American
inventors of the 20th century, Dr. Emeagwali also
has won the Gordon Bell Prize – the Nobel Prize for
computation. His computers are currently being
used to forecast the weather and to predict the
likelihood and effects of future global warming.