Philip Emeagwali
Philip Emeagwali
Philip Emeagwali is a Nigerian inventor and scientist. He has been living in the United States for many years. An Igbo from the commercial city of Onitsha in Anambra State. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prizefor price-performance in high-performance computing applications, in an oil reservoir modeling calculation using a novel mathematical formulation and implementation...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionScientist
CountryNigeria
astronomers mathematician physicist
I wanted to become a mathematician, physicist or astronomer.
american-musician
The 65,536 processors were inside the Connection Machine.
american-musician computers depends lives performing
Our lives sometimes depends on computers performing as predicted.
american-musician deny details inventors office patent patents provided publicly reason trademark
The reason is that the Patent and Trademark Office can deny patents to inventors that publicly provided details of their invention.
american-musician understanding
Briefly, to program it requires an absolute understanding of how all 65,536 processors are interconnected.
american-musician identify nature
First, I identify an analogous problem in nature and borrow from it.
american-musician attempt computer entirely guinea human labs left million program
The labs were happy that I was brave enough to attempt to program it and the $5 million computer was left entirely to my use. I was their human guinea pig.
different analogies fields
I have expertise in five different fields which helps me to easily understand the analogy between my scientific problems and those occurring in nature.
opportunity discovery important
The greater opportunity enabled me to make important discoveries and inventions.
wheels smarter
It is smarter to borrow from nature than to reinvent the wheels.
vaccines challenges hiv
The greatest grand challenge for any scientist is discovering how to prevent the spread of HIV and finding the cure or an effective vaccine for AIDS.
computer sometimes performing
Our lives sometimes depend on computers performing as predicted.
men epidemics hiv
One out of every 100 American men is HIV positive. The rate of infection has reached epidemic proportions in 40 developing nations.
focus important mystery
My focus is not on solving nature's deeper mysteries. It is on using nature's deeper mysteries to solve important societal problems.