Phillip Emeagwali
Born in Onitsha, Nigeria and a roommate to Chike Obi,
the first Nigerian to receive a Phd in
Mathematics. When he was 17, Emeagwali scored in
the 99 percentile on the American SAT exam. This won
him a scholarship to Oregon State University in
Corvallis, OR, where he majored in math. Today, much
of the academic and computer world is amazed by
some of the discoveries of this young “Nigerian
genius.” In February of 1989, he the prestigious
Gordon Bell Prize for programming supercomputers
to work faster than ever before and for helping to
solve one of the nation’s toughest oil recovery
problems.
