COMMENCEMENT ORATION
- for Philip Emeagwali
(June 2005)

Son of Africa,
supercomputer pioneer,
a visionary father of the Internet,
we honor you.

We heed Kwame Nkrumah’s warning that,
“socialism without science is void”
in honoring you
for crowning Africa
with shining scientific discoveries.
Nnamdi Azikiwe said,
“Originality is the essence
of true scholarship.
Creativity is the soul
of the true scholar.”
You exemplify both.

You discovered a formula
that enables computers
powered by 65,000 electronic brains
called "processors"
to work as one supercomputer
that performs
the world’s fastest calculations.

Your discoveries
inspired the reinvention
of supercomputers,
as a union
of vast numbers of processors
communicating like an Internet.

You theorized
that 65,000 computers
around the Earth
could work as one
to forecast the weather.
This theoretical supercomputer,
with 65,000 nodes,
is known today as the Internet.

For your bold theory,
the book History of the Internet,
CNN and TIME magazine have called you
“a father of the Internet.”

You solved
the most difficult problem
in supercomputing
by reformulating
Newton’s Second Law of Motion
as 18 equations and algorithms,
then as 24 million algebraic equations;
finally
you programmed
65,000 processors
to work as one and solve
those 24 million equations
at a speed
of 3.1 billion calculations per second.

Your 65,000 processors,
24 million equations
and 3.1 billion calculations
were three world records,
garnered international headlines,
made mathematicians rejoice,
and caused your fellow Africans
to beam with pride.

Your discovery that
65,000 processors
could work as one
is foundational knowledge
that gave rise to the
eight billion dollar a year
supercomputer industry
and paved the way
to solving problems
that were once thought
to be unsolvable
and improved life
for millions.

A poll by the London-based
New African magazine
ranked you as
history's greatest scientist
of African descent.

After you won
the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize,
the Nobel Prize of supercomputing,
President Bill Clinton called you
“one of the great minds of the Information Age,”
as well as "the Bill Gates of Africa"
and referred to
computer geniuses as
"another Emeagwali."

By expanding
the limits of computing,
you helped us all
move forward
into the age of information.

Mr. Chancellor,
for his groundbreaking discoveries
and for the sheer force of his mind,
I ask you
to confer
the degree of Doctor of Science,
honoris causa,
upon PHILIP EMEAGWALI.

EMEAGWALI POEMS

Emeagwali Had An Idea
Ikenga for Emeagwali
A Father of the Internet
King God Emeagwali

Emeagwali (third from bottom right) was voted history's 35th greatest African.