THE 8-year-old boy sat in his family's lounge and stared at the small alarm
clock his dad had put in front of him.  He was furious because his friends
were playing soccer outside, and he had to sit here for the next three
hours.  ``Are you ready?'' asked his father. ``You have 60 minutes to answer
the next 100 questions.'' Young Philip Emeagwali nodded. He knew he had just
36 seconds to answer each question. It was not enough time to write the
answers down, so he'd have to calculate them in his head.

Philip's father started firing questions at him. "Mohammed averaged 88 per
cent in three mathematics tests. In the first test he got 92 per cent. In
the second he got 94 per cent. What per cent did he get in the third test?"
The little boy thought hard and answered fast.
For three long hours the questions came, and at the end of each hour Philip
had answered another 100 questions - and he got most of them right.  James
Emeagwali smiled proudly. He knew his son was no ordinary boy, and that in
spite of his poverty, he would grow up to become someone important.

TODAY Philip Emeagwali, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan
in America, is spoken as "the Bill Gates of Africa" --- and his personal
worth has been estimated at R200 million.  From a poor youngster in rural
Nigeria he grew up to become what the American magazine Michigan Today
described as "one of the world's fastest
humans".  He won this recognition and America's most influential prize for
computing genius --- the Gordon Bell Prize --- for writing the formula that
would enable a computer to make 3,1 billion calculations a second.  The
formula enabled the American oil industry to tap into huge reserves of
underground oil, and contributed billions of dollars to the government's
oil-exploration
programmes.  In addition he has amassed university degrees in five different
fields and his wealth has enabled him to bring 18 relatives to America from
Nigeria.

Philip grew up in the commercial city of Onitsha in south-eastern Nigeria
where his father was a nurse. At school he was so bright he was able to
answer questions before his schoolfriends had even written the questions
down. Teachers and classmates, amazed at his extraordinary ability, called
him `Calculus,' because he was so good at calculating or working out sums.

In spite of his genius for mathematics, Philip had to leave school in
Standard 8, because his father could no longer afford the school fees.
But back home, his father continued teaching him. Eventually James Emeagwali
had to stop teaching his son, because Philip knew more than he did. As a
result, the pre-teenager studied on his own to finish high school and to
earn a General Certificate of Education from the University of London.  What
makes Philip's achievements even more extraordinary is that his family had
to flee Nigeria during a civil war. "We slept in refugee camps, abandoned
school buildings and bombed houses. We stood in long lines to receive food
from charity organisations," says Philip.  "But the hardship of living in a
refugee camp made me psychologically strong. It made me street smart. It
equipped me a greater sense of determination and vision."
At the age of 17 he won a scholarship to Oregon State University in America,
where he studied maths. After that he went to George Washington University,
where he was awarded two masters' degrees: one in civil and environmental
engineering and another in ocean, coastal and marine engineering. He was
also awarded a master's degree in mathematics from the University of
Maryland.He has worked as a civil engineer in constructing traffic highways
in Maryland and operating hydroelectric dams in Wyoming and today is a
consultant in supercomputing, internet and information technology.
BEHIND Philip's success is a radical new computer he programmed to solve
important problems. It's called the Connection Machine, and the reason it's
being applauded worldwide is that it can work faster and do more work than
any computer on Earth.

Philip got his idea for programming the Connection Machine by watching bees
build their honeycombs. No other creatures on earth work more efficiently
that a community of bees building a honeycomb, he thought. So why not
program a computer that uses thousands of other computers (like bees) to
work? So instead of using a single huge computer the size of a luxury car to
do all his work, Philip used the Internet to connect to 65000 smaller
computers.
This way he found his computer could do an amazing rate of 3,1 billion
calculations a second -- three times the speed of the previous Gordon Bell
prize winner --- and set a new world record.

He wanted to solve one of the nation's 20 most difficult problems:
understanding how oil flows underground so companies could extract the most
oil in the cheapest and easiest way.  Typically, oil is trapped within rocks
--- like water in a drenched sponge
--- and oil companies can remove only five per cent to 50 per cent.
Philip and his computer found a way to get much more oil out of the ground
-- a discovery regarded by oil companies and the United States Government as
a world breakthrough which would enrich the nation by billions of dollars.
Now his supercomputer is being used not just to find oil but for several
other major international projects, such as improving the accuracy of
weather predictions, explaining the unsolved mysteries of science, tracking
the flow of blood in the human heart, calculating the movement of buried
nuclear waste, tracking the spread of AIDS, and determining the long-term
effects of gases in the air and how the heat of the sun is burning up the
Earth.
Philip has received dozens of awards for his pioneering work, a tribute to
his extraordinary contribution to science.  This year he was awarded
Africa's largest scholarly prize, the Nigeria Prize, by the Federal Republic
of Nigeria.  Last year the National Society of Black Engineers in the United
States awarded him the title Pioneer of the Year. In 1991 the same society
voted him Scientist of the Year.
He has also been voted Africa's Best Scientist, America's Best & Brightest
Inventor in 1996, and the Computer Scientist of the Year by America's
National Technical Association in 1993.

Philip attributes his success to his Igbo background in south-east Nigeria
and a spirit of adventure, qualities he wants to pass on to his young son.
"Successful Africans help break the negative prejudices against Africans and
inspire the younger generations of Africans to accomplish more.  Studying
abroad makes it easier to become successful abroad. When I got to America I
was amazed at the level of technological development there. In one day I saw
an airport, used a telephone, used a library, talked with a scientist, and
was shown a computer for the first time in my life. Not in my wildest dreams
did I expect to be recognised as a contributor to American technology."


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