Philip Emeagwali's video: In Africa Algebra Alleviates Poverty Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

I'm @Philip Emeagwali. At the Christ the King College, Onitsha, of the then East Central State of Nigeria, of 1970, I was the rising star in physics and calculus. For that reason, everybody at Christ the King College, Onitsha, called me “Calculus,” rather than “Philip.” At Christ the King College, Onitsha, my physics textbook was titled: “Advanced Level Physics.” That physics textbook was co-authored by Michael Nelkon and Philip Parker. Those that knew me by the name “Calculus” at Christ the King College, Onitsha, Nigeria, were not surprised that I won a scholarship that was dated September 10, 1973. That scholarship made it possible for me to arrive in the United States on Sunday March 24, 1974. I spent my first night in the United States alone. I spent that first night in 36 Butler Hall, Monmouth, Oregon. An earlier turning point for me —as a mathematician—was in June 1970 at age 15 inside a bookstore near Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, East Central State, Nigeria. The bookstore was a short distance from Zik’s Roundabout, Onitsha. Inside that bookstore, I paid the then unheard of one pound and five shillings for a 568-page blue hardbound book that was titled: “An Introduction to the Infinitesimal Calculus.” The calculus book was subtitled “With Applications to Mechanics and Physics.” The calculus book was written by G.W. [George William] Caunt and published by Oxford University Press. The frontier of knowledge of physics, calculus, and algebra are the intellectual swords that I used in my supercomputer quest for the then uncharted territory now known as the massively parallel processing supercomputer. That terra incognita of knowledge is where the fastest supercomputer exists and where I discovered how to harness my ensemble of processors as the building blocks of a new supercomputer. That new supercomputer is the precursor to the modern parallel processing supercomputer. I discovered how to harness those processors to solve extreme-scale problems in algebra that arose in computational physics. I was the first person to witness the world’s fastest algebraic computation that occurred across a new internet that was a global network of 65,536 processors. I witnessed that fastest algebraic computations at 10:15 in the morning Washington, D.C. Time Tuesday Fourth of July 1989, the US Independence Day. That experimental discovery represents a new paradigm in the history of algebra. At first, I couldn’t believe my fastest algebraic computations and I believed that I had made a mistake in the manner I operated the internal timer that I used to time the speed of my new supercomputer. Everybody said I had made an embarrassing mistake but everybody was embarrassingly mistaken. At my mathematical core, I’m also an extreme-scale algebraist. It made the news headlines in 1989 that I—Philip Emeagwali—discovered how to solve the largest system of linear equations of algebra and how to solve them at the fastest speeds but with the slowest processors. What I contributed to extreme-scale, fast computational mathematics was the cover story of top publications in mathematics. I discovered how to reduce the toughest problems in calculus to their acceptable approximations in algebra. I discovered those algebraic approximations as the most extreme-scale problems in computational algebra. That mathematical discovery led me to the most computation-intensive problems in floating-point arithmetic that I could only solve, by first, discovering how to massively parallel process and how to do so across my small copy of the Internet that’s a global network of 64 binary thousand processors. Let’s put my mathematical discovery in historical perspective. The quadratic equation of your high school algebra had one unknown and two solutions, just as the quadratic equation x squared equals nine has the two solutions minus three and plus three. And your high school, small-scale algebra textbooks didn’t go beyond a system of three equations that had to be manually solved for three unknowns. But today, I’m wondering how can I massively parallel compute a system of a million billion trillion equations of algebra and do so to compute at the fastest speeds for answers that comprise of knowing a million billion trillion unknowns. That’s impossible to scribble across all the blackboards in the world. That’s impossible to store within one motherboard. I discovered that massively parallel supercomputing may make it possible to someday solve for a million billion trillion unknowns and, help discover and recover otherwise elusive crude oil and natural gas. Algebra is an instrument of poverty alleviation. Philip Emeagwali 180128 3 of 7