For a man voted one of the greatest Africans in history, Philip Emeagwali is found wanting.

Ask Nigerian university students who the greatest present-day Nigerian scientist is and they are likely tell you 'Philip Emeagwali.' But who is Philip Emeagwali and why is he famous? He is seen as a supercomputer guru, who programmed sixty-five thousand processors on a Connection Machine 2 (a supercomputer) to compute 3.1 billion calculations per second when modeling an oil reservoir. This was meant to be a feat never before achieved. Thus, all of a sudden, Emeagwali became an icon in Nigeria, seen as an embodiment of the American dream – a refugee child who fled Nigeria during the 1967-70 civil war, finding a new life in the United States and excelling at what he did.

However, not everyone appears to have bought into this fairy tale story. Jonathan Elendu of Elendureport.com digs into the life of the man behind the myth and comes out with the following stark conclusion – it all appears to be false. In his own words "the jury is still out on Phillip Emeagawli [Emeagwali] and his accomplishments." Firmly believing most of Emeagwalis's claims to be untrue, Mr. Elendu asks "Is it greed, ego, criminal ignorance, or in-built self destructive tendencies that lead[s]…people to make claims that cannot be substantiated easily." What are these claims, and what did Jonathan Elendu find out about Philip Emeagwali?

Professor Emeagwali?

Often, though not always, being a world-class scientist demands that one goes through the process of academic research training which leads to the award of a doctorate degree (a PhD, that is). Some researchers go on to become professors. Emeagwali has neither a PhD nor a professorship. Yet, on a magazine cover displayed on his website, he is clearly addressed as Prof. Emeagwali (note that the pictures on his website keep changing). Elendu states that Emeagwali at one time filed a "suit against the University of Michigan for refusing to award him a doctorate degree in super computing or engineering." He further states that Emeagwali's work was not up to the university's standards and he was denied a PhD. Despite an appeal on the grounds of racial discrimination, Emeagwali never did receive the PhD degree he labored so hard to get.

Most Searched-For Scientist?

Jonathan Elendu goes on to say that all websites which speak of the laurels received by Philip Emeagwali are owned by him. There was one time this writer read an article on Emeagwali's website which stated: "Emeagwali is the most searched for scientist in the world." The article made it clear that more searches were being carried out for Philip Emeagwali than Stephen Hawking, the renowned British physicist. Having a WordTracker subscription, through which it was possible to see what was being searched for on the net, this writer did a bit of research on it. Alas! Emeagwali was barely being searched for on the internet while there were non-stop queries for Stephen Hawking. That was the first inkling to the fact that some pieces of information on Emeagwali's website were blatantly false.

A Scientist That Does Not Publish

If Philip Emeagwali is a scientist, then he must have published work in peer-reviewed journals. All top-class scientists do so, and without such one could never be considered for prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize in the sciences. There are very few scientists who choose not to publish regularly in peer-reviewed journals like Stephen Wolfram, the author of A New Kind of Science and head of Wolfram Research. Colleagues never take their work seriously. Having access to a license for SciFinder, a piece of software that allows one to see all published scientific work from every corner of the globe since the beginning of the 20th century, this writer did a search with the name "Emeagwali." Just four results were obtained, all in reference to the work of Dale Emeagwali, who happens to be Philip Emeagwali's wife, a scientist herself. What this means is that Philip Emeagwali has no published scientific work in peer-reviewed journals. Yet on his website, he is called the "greatest scientist of African descent."

Jonathan Elendu also did some investigation in this regard, focusing on Emeagwali's patents, and states: "Claims of Emeagwali holding patents to forty-one inventions are splashed on his websites. We searched for these patents at the appropriate places and came up with nothing to corroborate those claims. Where are these patents registered? Who in the scientific community is aware of these inventions?"

The 35th Greatest African Ever?

New African, a reputable African magazine voted Emeagwali amongst the 100 greatest Africans ever, alongside such people as Nelson Mandela, Wole Soyinka, Kwame Nkurma, Muhammed Ali, Maya Angelo, Martin Luther King, F.W. de Klerk, Queen Nefertiti and Kenneth Kaunda. This writer was opportuned to see the edition of New African Magazine in which this information was published. But what exactly are Emeagwali's contributions or did they rely on information from his website which appears to be nothing but self-promotional, most of which cannot be verified? According to Emeagwali's website, he was voted the 35th greatest African of all time.

So, Who Is Philip Emeagwali?

For a man who is labeled (on his website that is) as the "World's Top Scientist," "An Internet Pioneer," "A Father of the Internet" and "A Great Mind," it is practically impossible to verify almost all of the claims made on his website. This writer is skeptical about the claims of Philip Emeagwali with the exception of the fact that he received the Gordon Bell Award for scientific computing in 1989, which has been verified. Yet, the Gordon Bell Award is $5000 award (probably much less when Emeagwali received it in 1989), though Philip Emeagwali keeps referring to it as the "Nobel Prize of Computing." The bulk of the information on his website appears to be nothing but hype. And Emeagwali, as ever, remains a myth.

See also: Philip Emeagwali: Final Thoughts

Labels: Fraud, Nigeria, Science, United States