Diversity & Innovation
A series highlighting Diversity and Inclusion in Innovation and Design Thinking
Philip Emeagwal
March 29th, 2021
Philip Emeagwal, born in Nigeria, was forced to drop out of school at age 14 due to the Nigerian Civil War. After the war, he completed his high school education independently and then studied in the United States for both an undergraduate and two graduate degrees. In 1989 he was credited as creating the world’s fastest computer. Using 65,000 processes, this supercomputer was able to perform 3.1 billion calculations per second. His design was based on the honeycomb structure found in beehives. That same year, Emeagwali received the Gordon Bell Prize for his application of the CM-2 massively-parallel computer.