Philip Emeagwali is a Nigerian engineer, mathematician and computer scientist. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, a recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, for the purpose of implementing computing applications, used in oil reservoir modeling calculation.
Emeagwali was born in Akure, in Nigeria, on August 23, 1954.
In 1967, due to the Nigerian civil war, he was forced to suspend his studies. At fourteen he served in the army of Biafra. After the war, he completed his education independently by studying alone. In 1974 he moved to Oregon after winning a scholarship and graduated in mathematics in 1977. During this time he worked as a civil engineer at the Bureau of Land Reclamation in Wyoming. Later he moved to Washington DC where he earned a master’s degree in maritime and ocean engineering by attending George Washington University, and a second master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland.
He is married to Dale Brown Emeagwali, an African American microbiologist.
Emeagwali was awarded the Gordon Bell Prize, in 1989 thanks to his use of a Connection Machine in the field of computational fluid dynamics (realization of three-dimensional models of oil reserves). He won the prize for the “price/performance” category. Emeagwali’s simulation was the first program to apply to the pseudo-time approach to reservoir modeling.
Emeagwali ranked 35th on the list of the greatest Africans of all time in a survey by New African magazine. His results were cited in a speech by Bill Clinton as an example of what Nigerians could get if given the opportunity. He is often quoted in newspapers during Black History Month.
Emeagwali attended the University of Michigan between 1987 and 1991 with the aim of obtaining a doctorate. His thesis, however, was not accepted by a committee of examiners and therefore could not obtain a doctorate. He asked for a court challenge at the university in which he declared that the decision was a violation of civil rights and that the university had discriminated against him in many ways because of his race. The court challenge was rejected.